Global Mental Health

The Workshop will focus on the issue of culture—the extent to which concepts of mental health care can translate and be implemented in different social, economic, and cultural settings around the world. Might the “friendship bench” concept in Zimbabwe translate to provide sustainable, effective mental health interventions in Europe? And how do European concepts of trauma management work when applied to traumatized refugee populations from different cultures (eg, the Yezidi people from northern Iraq)? Finally, by presenting an excerpt from the film project “Breaking the Chains”, we will give a brief insight into the use of physical restraint and confinement of people with mental illness in Indonesia, which has recently come to international attention.

With this workshop, we would like to discuss cultural entities such as “trauma” as a global issue rather than simply a psychological phenomenon. In our view, global mental health might be best understood using an interdisciplinary, multiprofessional, biopsychosocial approach.