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This optional single module aims to develop students' understanding of the impact and significance of the social context and social determinants of mental health. It also introduces students to the discipline of global mental health, especially mental health research and practice in low- and middle-income countries, considering clinical, epidemiological and anthropological perspectives. This module will equip students with the basic skills and knowledge to pursue further academic and professional work related to social and global aspects of mental health.
The course will be taught over 8 three hour sessions in Term 2: Thursday mornings 10-1pm 10th January 2019 - 28th February 2019, accompanied by Moodle online materials and resources.
Module Leaders
The module is run jointly by Nicola Morant at the Division of Psychiatry, and Dr Rochelle Burgess at the UCL Institute for Global Health. Teaching will be delivered by module leads and several other academics from UCL and elsewhere.
Nicola Morant is a part-time lecturer in qualitative mental health research, with a background is social psychology. She also works as an independent research consultant, specializing in qualitative research in mental health, and leading qualitative work streams in mixed-methods research projects. Her research interests include psychiatric medication management; shared decision-making; acute mental health care; and psychosis in community settings. Her work gives voice to the perspectives and experiences of key stakeholders (service users, clinicians and carers) in projects with real-world orientations and clinical applications.
For the past 10 years I have worked on global health issues with an emphasis on community participation and qualitative methodologies. I am interested in the development and promotion of community approaches to health around the world. My work takes interest in the interface between health concerns and broader development issues such as poverty, power, systems of governance, and community mobilisation (civil society). I have in-country experience in a number of low-income settings, including South Africa, Swaziland, Kenya and Colombia. My doctoral research, conducted in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, explored community mental health care systems and their capacity to respond to the needs of emotionally distressed HIV/AIDS affected women living in poverty. I secured numerous grants to support this work, including the prestigious Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Doctoral Research Award, valued at more than 85,000 CAD over four years. My research was anchored to social science perspectives, including community psychology, social policy and anthropology. I continue to work on issues related to common mental disorders in low and middle income settings, drawing on social science frameworks.
I am a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health, and a member of the ESRC peer review college (ESRC global challenges peer review group), among other affiliations.
Module Contents
This module will help students understand social and cultural influences on mental health, with a focus on understanding the impact on mental health and mental health care of social context, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Students will be introduced to debates about how best to understand and research social and global inequalities in mental health and mental health care, in particular how to conceptualise the influence of universal and locally-specific risk and protective factors. They will gain understanding of practical quantitative and qualitative approaches to researching the social influences on mental health, including epidemiology, qualitative research techniques and ethnography. They will learn about major socio-cultural determinants of mental health inequalities, and about local and international social interventions and policy responses to address these. The module critically evaluates social and cross-cultural mental health research, including the challenges of research and intervention in cross-cultural and low-resource settings, translation and adaptation of tools and interventions, global mental health policy and debate, and pertinent ethical issues. The module will also further understanding of how social, cultural and biological factors combine to affect experiences of mental disorders, as well as their diagnosis and treatment.
Learning Outcomes
- To understand the concept of global burden of mental ill health, and the local and international policy responses to addressing it.
- To be familiar with current evidence regarding social determinants of mental ill health, including the impacts of poverty and social deprivation, discrimination and social exclusion, and loneliness and social isolation.
- To understand how qualitative and ethnographic research can be used to investigate the impact of social and cultural context on experiences of mental health problems and treatment.
- To learn how epidemiological methods are used in practice to investigate the social determinants of mental health.
- To understand how research and the delivery of mental health care may be designed and implemented to be appropriate to a range of settings, including low and middle income countries.