23 March 2021
Dear readers,
Welcome to another roundup of events, publications, jobs and resources for the upcoming month. I hope it contributes to your better understanding and enjoyment of global mental health - it certainly is a pleasure for me to put together. Our field is diverse and I try to bring some of the most interesting things to this newsletter. Thank you for your sustained interest. With later issues, I will take a thematic approach, but there will always be space here for current and important matters.
Any feedback and suggestions you want to make will reach me at manolova.gergana@gmail.com and I will be happy to consider including your materials, job ads, publications and contributions here.
This newsletter is FREE. If you like it, please forward it to others who might enjoy it. Anyone not subscribed who wants to do so can simply hit the button below.
Yours,
Gergana
Events in Global Mental Health
The event calendar for 2021 is live and you can keep track of it at globallyminded.org. Unsurprisingly, most of the events already scheduled and announced this year are taking place online and there is a serious question mark hanging over those announced to be in person. The online events are announced on a very short timeline and I often put them on the events list only 2-3 days before they are due, so I would recommend you keep checking the list regularly to see what is happening soon.
2021 Global Mental Health Research Without Borders Conference - For me, this is the big event in the coming 4 weeks or so. The conference is organized jointly by the US National Institute for Mental Health and Grand Challenges Canada; it will be online, it will be free to attend for anyone and the agenda is based on discussions with a superstar cast of panellists from the six continents. Head over to the website to register, it takes 1 minute exactly. It will be taking place, you guessed it, on Zoom. If you are all Zoom-ed out by this point, recorded sessions will be available later, and check out the Resource section below to see how you can turn them into sound files for your walk or commute.
Jobs in Global Mental Health
The jobs listed here might not be advertised as being in global mental health and the decision for including them is mine. Unless otherwise stated, I have found out about them through job sites, social media posts, other newsletters and such, so I have no more information on them than publicly available and you should contact those listed in the job ad.
No or minimum experience necessary
Some experience (2-5 years) necessary
Research Fellow (x3) at University of Edinburgh, Scotland - by 15 Apr
Administrative Assistant at StrongMinds Mental Health Africa, US office - by mid-Apr
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at University of Newcastle, Australia - by 31 Mar
Grants Coordinator at MQ Mental Health Research, UK - by 16 Apr
Expert in MHPSS, COOPI Niger - by 1 Apr
Assistant, Associate or Full Professor in Global Mental Health at University of Columbia, US - open end
Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Mapping Consultant at International Rescue Committee - open end
5+ years of experience necessary
Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London - by 23 Mar
Head of Lived Experience at Mind, UK - by 1 Apr
Resources in Global Mental Health
A section for various opportunities, databanks, information sources that may prove helpful
Ever since I joined the field of global mental health 5 years ago, it seems to me I’m trying to catch up with all the wonderful and informative webinars, talks, podcasts from which I could learn so much. Here I present to you my favourite webinar and talk collections, which can double as great introduction to certain global mental health topics. If you are a fan of listening to podcasts while you are taking a walk or commuting, consider extracting the audio from these web pages to put on your phone and listen to offline - it’s easier than you might think.
#MHforAll webinars - this series has been running since shortly after the start of the pandemic last year and has been focusing on mental health and COVID-19. The presenters are specialists in their field, and the topics are myriad: human rights, research funding, education, stigma and discrimination, LGBTQIA+, media representations… all in the context of mental health. The organizers of the series are The Lancet Psychiatry, Mental Health Innovation Network, MHPSS.net and United for GMH. The series is ongoing, with new live webinars usually every 2 weeks.
Global Mental Health Peer Network webinars - although there are not that many so far, the GMHPN are just hitting their stride. The topics are important and timely, presented from the perspective of experts by experience. Give a view to the other videos by the GMHPN on their YouTube channel, especially the project “Our Global Voice” where people with lived experience from various countries give in-depth interviews.
McGill University GMH Program webinars - infrequent yet highly interesting webinars on the theoretical - conceptualization of global mental health, on co-constructing knowledge, on the definition and definers of disability - and the practical - Haiti school-based study, humanitarian emergencies, developing public mental health in Liberia, participatory action research in Colombia, the Friendship Bench.
Mental Health Innovation Network webinars - MHIN is a motherlode for all kinds of resources, but the amassed collection of webinars is a recorded history of the development of global mental health in the past decade or so. You will find many presentations of research and implementation projects that might tickle your curiosity, experts speaking on diverse topics such as peer support groups, alcohol abuse, managing the ebola epidemic, and overarching educational webinars on men and help-seeking, aid worker mental health, maternal mental health and many others.
Mad in America - calls for participants in research studies
If you don’t already know it, this website on ‘science, psychiatry and social justice’ is in itself very interesting for its collection of information, knowledge, references and thoughtful pieces. On this particular page you will find calls for participating in research studies that ask experts by experience and people with lived experience to contribute their perspective.
Latest Publications in Global Mental Health
The selection of publications ultimately reflects my personal knowledge and preferences, but I have no intended bias. Feel free to send me publications you consider interesting or that you would like to be featured.
Everyone loses when mental health research is not diverse. But how do we measure diversity? - a blog post by Yasmin Ahmadzadeh on the differences between recording race, ethnicity, ethnic group and ancestry.
Here is a question to ponder: is race a social determinant of mental health? Or is racism a structural determinant of mental health? Or are they both determinants in their own separate ways? And what does the first thing mean at all? This blog piece, though short, hints at the deeper issue, at least where global mental health research is concerned - that as an interdisciplinary field which claims to encompass all the people of the globe we need to define and use consistently and appropriately terms such as race, ethnicity, culture. If we are going to put people in groups, we had better make sure we are reflecting the real world situation and are not causing harm and forcing artificial separation where there is none. Similarly, we should make sure that we are capturing the experiences that shape people’s lives and are not ignoring real and detrimental forces at work. Supplement this read with the recent Boston University School of Public Health conversations on epidemiology and race, where recording race in studies was also discussed by the eminent panel.
COVID-19 mental health impact and responses in low-income and middle-income countries: reimagining global mental health - a Lancet Psychiatry paper discussing the added impact of COVID-19 on mental health around the world, what opportunities this creates for changing the field of global mental health and how it can be done.
Describing the current state of global mental health would take more than a book, therefore the authors, the list of whom reads like a who-is-who in GMH, are rightly focusing on the future. The picture painted by short-term and longer-term impacts of COVID-19 is grim: human rights abuses increase, employment opportunities and freedoms decrease, an already urgent situation in prevalence of mental illness is made worse by lockdowns, domestic violence, job loss, school closures, anxiety and loss. According to the authors, the pandemic is the great leveller between the much-discussed groupings of high-income (HIC) and low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) - the types of damage and the countermeasures have been roughly consistent around the world.
Recommendations for the future stress the leading role people with lived experience should play, safeguarding human rights, treating potential syndemics (convergence of epidemic conditions) of mental ill health and COVID-19 on the local and contextual level, incorporating technological solutions, integrating mental health into universal healthcare and attending to children and young people’s mental health. The last, I think, is especially pertinent, since pupils and students everywhere have suffered the double blows of disruption to their educational routines and experiencing the family and community distress. I would have liked to see in this paper a stronger call to all people in the global mental health field to campaign and advocate openly on concrete steps for action at the local and national level.
Global mental health should engage with the ethics of involuntary admission - a paper by Marisha Wickremsinhe on the need for the field to align more closely with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and take a stance on involuntary admission for psychiatric reasons
I consider reading and talking about ethics in global mental health non-optional and this short publication shows why. GMH has its blind spots that may be caused by oversight or deliberate omission, but they must be brought out in the open and discussed. In particular, we should do more research into the realities of involuntary admission - what percentage, in what conditions, for how long, to what end - and hold a sustained discussion on the ethics of it. Otherwise we are turning our back on the elephant in the room, condemning people to misery when we can do something about it and undermining trust in the field.
*Social image courtesy of Pexels.
The Language Corner will be back soon…