'Madness' after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina - challenging dominant understandings of distress.

This article reports on the findings from a small-scale co-produced qualitative study on experiences of distress caused by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Inspired by the emerging interdisciplinary field of Mad Studies, the study is novel and unique in two ways. First, it prioritises social understanding and interpretation of madness and distress.

Strategic universality in the making of global guidelines for mental health.

Based on interviews with members of the Guideline Development Group (GDG) of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) Guidelines for Mental, Neurological and Substance Use Disorders, this article adds empirical depth to understanding the contingent and strategic nature of universality in relation to mental health. Differently from debating whether or not mental health is global, the article outlines the people, ideas, and processes involved in making it global. Thematic analysis of interviews carried out with nine (out of 21) members of the original mhGAP GDG identified six intersecting strategies that enable the construction of universality in global mental health (GMH): 1) processes and practices of assembling expertise; 2) decisions on what counts as evidence; 3) framing cultural relativism as nihilistic; 4) the delaying of complexity to prioritize action; 5) the narration of tensions as technical rather than epistemological; and 6) the ascription of messiness to local contexts rather than to processes of standardization.

Psychiatrization of Society: A Conceptual Framework and Call for Transdisciplinary Research.

Worldwide, there have been consistently high or even rising incidences of diagnosed mental disorders and increasing mental healthcare service utilization over the last decades, causing a growing burden for healthcare systems and societies. While more individuals than ever are being diagnosed and treated as mentally ill, psychiatric knowledge, and practices affect the lives of a rising number of people, gain importance in society as a whole and shape more and more areas of life. This process can be described as the progressing psychiatrization of society.

'Built for expansion': the 'social life' of the WHO's mental health GAP Intervention Guide.

The focus of this study is the WHO's mhGAP-Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG) 2.0 (2016), an evidence-based tool and guideline to help detect, diagnose and manage the most common mental disorders, designed for use by non-specialists globally but particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This research is a starting point in tracing the multiple 'doings' of mhGAP-IG - connecting questions of how it is 'done' and what does it 'do' - to the living histories and wider global mental health assemblages that make the tool possible and shape its global circulation.

The (Mis)appropriation of HIV/AIDS advocacy strategies in Global Mental Health: towards a more nuanced approach.

Background: Mental health is increasingly finding a place on global health and international development agendas. Advocates for Global Mental Health (GMH), and international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, argue that treatments available in high-income countries should also be made available in low- and middle-income countries. Such arguments are often made by comparing mental health to infectious diseases, including the relative disease and economic burdens they impose, and pointing to the applicability of the right to access treatment for mental health, not only infectious diseases.