Invited Opinions

I write this in New York on the eve of the United Nations’ High-level meeting on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) with the very pleasant knowledge that mental health disorders have been given prominence in the Political Declaration. The Commission’s report is a clear and cogent statement...

As a human rights expert in the area of persons with disabilities, my comments will focus on the Commission’s reflection on the human rights framework for the global mental health response, in particular when it refers to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons...

Behind a health clinic in southern Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe, there is a wooden bench known as a ‘friendship bench’. Every morning grandmothers, trained to deliver low-intensity cognitive therapy, take turns to sit on it and talk to anyone who sits down about...

  In the early 1980s, I (Paul Farmer) met Marie-Thérèse: a brilliant, remarkable young woman from a poor family in Haiti’s Central Plateau. A couple of years after we began working together, she was diagnosed by psychiatrists at the Mars and Kline national psychiatric hospital...

This is an extremely important and innovative report, and as expected from a Lancet Commission, takes us forward in our conceptualization and understanding of mental health, while also providing critical pointers for future mental health interventions. Despite this report being relatively practical in its orientation...

If a problem can’t be solved within the frame it was conceived, the solution lies in reframing the problem. ― Brian McGreevy   The Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development calls for reframing the global mental health agenda in order to improve...

As the first principle of the World Health Organization’s constitution notes, “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Though it has been seven decades since this seminal document was signed, the global...

The report of the Lancet Commission on global mental health and sustainable development offers a timely and fresh perspective on global mental health in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While the adoption of mental health and substance use targets and indicators...

It has taken more than half a century of scientific research for health professionals recognise that most states of ill health arise from a combination of multiple biological and social factors, with the latter most often contributing to derangements in the former. Each of the...

The Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health is a very significant step forwards not only for those of us who work in the field, but also for those seeking to really understand the sector for the first time. The authors have managed to present in...