International Symposium on Psychiatry as Trans-science

18th, Feb.2023 (Sat)
Suzaku Campus, Ritsumeikan University
Zoom address:
https://ritsumei-ac-jp.zoom.us/j/93003166825?pwd=ZjdKRjdVM2NEZUhRZUs4ZGlUNlh4QT09
meeting ID: 930 0316 6825
passcode: 000000

Admission Free

Keynote Lecture

Rethinking Global Mental Health: The evidence gaps in the ‘treatment gap’
Prof. Stefan Ecks
Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh

Outline

Global Mental Health emerged from combining psychiatric epidemiology, health economics, health systems research, evidence-based therapeutics, lay awareness, human rights, and sustainable development into a coherent narrative about the “treatment gap.” I retrace the emergence and crisis of three pillars of GMH: epidemiology, economics of minds and moods, and the gap in treatment provision. I argue that GMH remains limited by its strategic ignorance of flaws in the data, of paradoxical relations between economic development and health improvement, and of how people actually seek help in low income countries. I conclude by arguing that GMH policies are bound to fail if they fail to reckon with the contradictions in its approach.

Profile

Stefan Ecks co-founded Edinburgh University’s Medical Anthropology programme. He did ethnographic fieldwork in India, Nepal, Myanmar, and the UK. Recent work focuses on an embodied theory of value, global pharmaceutical markets, changing ideas of depression, poverty and access to healthcare, and relations between multimorbidity and chronic medication use. Publications include Eating Drugs: Psychopharmaceutical Pluralism in India (New York University Press, 2013), Living Worth: Value and Values in Global Pharmaceutical Markets (Duke University Press, 2022), as well as many journal articles on the intersections between health and economics. (from the University of Edinburgh HP)

Program