Global Mental Health: Latin America and Spanish-Speaking Populations

175 Pages·2020·3.157 MB·English

by  Javier I. Escobar

GLOBAL MENTAL HEALTH
RUTGERS GLOBAL HEALTH
Series Editor: Javier I. Escobar
Graciela S. Alarcón and Renato D. Alarcón, The Bartonellas and Peruvian Medicine:
The Work of Alberto Leonardo Barton
Javier I. Escobar, ed., Global Mental Health: Latin Amer i ca and
Spanish- Speaking Populations
GLO B A L M ENTA L
H E A LTH
Latin Amer i ca and
Spanish- Speaking Populations
edited by
javier i. escobar, md
rutgers university press
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Escóbar, Javier, editor.
Title: Global mental health: Latin Amer i ca and Spanish- speaking
populations / edited by Javier I. Escobar.
Description: New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, [2020] |
Series: Rutgers Global Health | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019012940 | ISBN 9781978810044 (hardback: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780813595917 (pbk.: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Mental health ser vices. | World health. |
Hispanic Americans— Mental health.
Classification: LCC RA790.5 .E78 2020 | DDC 362.196/89008968073— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2019012940
A British Cataloging- in- Publication rec ord for this book is available from
the British Library.
This collection copyright © 2020 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Individual chapters copyright © 2020 in the names of their authors
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University
Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this
prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
www . rutgersuniversitypress . org
Manufactured in the United States of Amer i ca
To my wife, children, and grandchildren.
With appreciation to the many dear colleagues who
have enriched the field of global mental health.

CONTENTS
Series Foreword ix
javier i. escobar
Introduction 1
1 A Brief Review of Global Mental Health: Challenges,
Developments, and Needs 5
stanley nkemjika, javier i. escobar,
and humberto marin
2 Looking at Cultural Aspects of Global Mental Health:
The Culturally Infused Engagement Model in Latin
American and Asian Populations 41
miwa yasui and kathleen j. pottick
3 The Abuse of Psychiatry Globally: A Focus on a
Little- Known Historical Example from Francoist Spain 84
ethan pearlstein and javier i. escobar
4 Task- Shifting Strategies in Latin Amer i ca: The Key
Role of Primary Care Health Agents in Mental Health
Policy and Research in Northern Argentina 105
maria calvo, gabriel de erausquin, mariana
figueredo aguiar, eduardo padilla,
and javier i. escobar
5 Ge ne tic Research on Chronic, Severe Mental Disorders in
the Paisa Population in Latin America: A Review of Past and
Current Research 120
carrie E. bearden, carlos lopez jaramillo,
and javier i. escobar
vii
viii Contents
6 A Brief Rejoinder and Future Projections 143
javier i. escobar
Acknowl edgments 147
Notes on Contributors 149
Index 151
SERIES FOREWORD
Javier I. Escobar
This is the second volume from the series on global health published by Rutgers
University Press. The focus on mental disorders reflects the relevance of
these disorders globally in terms of their huge cost and the high level of dis-
ability that they induce. Unfortunately, global investment made in this area
lags significantly below that made in other areas of health, such as infectious
and nonmental diseases. The expansion of the field of global mental health
during the last de cade has been stimulated by small investments from foun-
dations as well as a few research grants from the National Institutes of Health
(NIH). These investments have resulted in fruitful collaborations, such as the
global mental health “hubs” funded by the National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH) that w ere primarily focused on developing “task- shifting”
strategies for helping with the shortage of specialty m ental health profession-
als in low- and middle-i ncome countries (LMICs). Very few of t hese global
mental health collaborations have taken place in Latin Amer i ca and the
Spanish- speaking world.
The essays included in this volume represent a number of research col-
laborations in which the se nior editor of this series (JIE) has engaged for the
past two de cades.
Besides providing a snapshot of the field of global m ental health, the book
highlights an impor tant new model for assessing and managing mental dis-
orders from a cultural perspective, and also pre sents some preliminary find-
ings from exciting new collaborative research proj ects focusing on chronic,
severe mental disorders in Latin Amer i ca. This research is state- of- the- art and
includes the training of new investigators in t hose regions, as well as sophis-
ticated clinical and neurological assessments making use of leading tech-
nologies such as neuroimaging and ge ne tic studies. The book also provides
the recent history and caveats related to the abuse of psychiatry globally,
with a par tic u lar emphasis on the occurrence of these abuses and misuses of
psychiatry in Spanish- speaking countries.
ix