From ‘Invisible Problem’ to Global Priority: The Inclusion of Mental Health in the Sustainable Development Goals

Perceptions regarding the importance of mental health are shifting at a global level. Once described as an ‘invisible problem’ in international development, mental health is now being framed as one of the most pressing development issues of our time. Concern over the historical absence of mental health from the development agenda — despite its being regarded as a major obstacle to development — has led to its recent inclusion in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article critically examines three intersecting axes key to its inclusion in the SDGs: 1) the conceptualization and calculation of the contribution of mental disorder to the global burden of disease; 2) the quantification of mental disorder as an economic burden; and 3) the relationship between mental distress and poverty. The article highlights the urgent need to foster a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between mental health and development, and shows how, at times, interventions in the two fields work together in producing reductionist, economistic, individualized and psychologized responses to poverty

Psy-expertise, therapeutic culture and the politics of the personal in development

Expertise stemming from the psy disciplines is increasingly and explicitly shaping international development policy and practice. Whilst some policy makers see the use of psy expertise as a new way to reduce poverty, increase economic efficiency, and promote wellbeing, others raise concerns that psychocentric development promotes individual over structural change, pathologises poverty, and depoliticises development. This paper specifically analyses four aspects of psy knowledge used in contemporary development policy: child development/developmental psychology, behavioural economics, positive psychology, and global mental health. This analysis illuminates the co-constitutive intellectual and colonial histories of development and psy-expertise: a connection that complicates claims that development has been psychologized; the uses and coloniality of both within a neoliberal project; and the potential for psychopolitics to inform development