Reconceptualising the treatment gap for common mental disorders: a fork in the road for global mental health?

SUMMARY: In this analysis, we argue that the 'treatment gap' for common mental disorders often reflects lack of demand, arising because services fail to address the needs of disadvantaged communities. We propose a route forward for global mental health, with explicit focus on action on the socioeconomic determinants of psychological suffering.

'All in good faith?' An ethno-historical analysis of local faith actors' involvement in the delivery of mental health interventions in northern Uganda.

Faith actors have become increasingly significant in the field of global mental health, through their inclusion in the delivery of psychosocial support in humanitarian settings. This inclusion remains empirically underexplored. We explore historical and contemporary activities of local faith actors in responding to mental disquiet in northern Uganda. Given pre-existing roles, we question what it means when humanitarians draw on faith actors to deliver mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in conflict-affected settings. We argue for a recognition of faith actors as agents operating within a therapeutic marketplace, which on occasion links suffering to social inequality and exclusion. We show, moreover, that the formal inclusion of Christian actors within MHPSS may not equate to the enforcement of rights-based values at the core of international ideas of protection.

COVID-19 vaccines, mobility, and pandemic bureaucracies: Undocumented migrants' perspectives from Italy's Alpine border.

While scholars have noted the deeply unequal effects of the pandemic containment, there has been limited attempt to map the socio-political lives of vaccination policies, particularly from the perspective of undocumented persons moving at state margins. This paper explores how undocumented migrants, who were predominantly male travellers attempting to cross Italy's Alpine borders, encountered Covid-19 vaccines and contemporary legislation. Based on ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews with migrants, doctors, and activists at safehouses both on the Italian and French sides of the Alpine border, we trace how mobility centred decisions to accept or reject vaccines were significantly shaped by exclusionary border regimes. We move beyond the exceptional focus of the Covid-19 pandemic to show how centring visions of health connected to viral risk diverted attention from migrants' wider struggles to move to obtain safety. Ultimately, we argue for a recognition of how health crises are not merely unequally experienced, but may result in the reconfiguration of violent governance practices at state borders.