Jain Sumeet, Orr David M R
University of Edinburgh.
University of Sussex.
Transcult Psychiatry. 2016 Dec;53(6):685-695. doi: 10.1177/1363461516679322.
The field of Global Mental Health (GMH) aims to influence mental health policy and practice worldwide, with a focus on human rights and access to care. There have been important achievements, but GMH has also been the focus of scholarly controversies arising from political, cultural, and pragmatic critiques. These debates have become increasingly polarized, giving rise to a need for more dialogue and experience-near research to inform theorizing. Ethnography has much to offer in this respect. This paper frames and introduces five articles in this issue of Transcultural Psychiatry that illustrate the role of ethnographic methods in understanding the effects and implications of the field of global mental health on mental health policy and practice. The papers include ethnographies from South Africa, India, and Tonga that show the potential for ethnographic evidence to inform GMH projects. These studies provide nuanced conceptualizations of GMH's varied manifestations across different settings, the diverse ways that GMH's achievements can be evaluated, and the connections that can be drawn between locally observed experiences and wider historical, political, and social phenomena. Ethnography can provide a basis for constructive dialogue between those engaged in developing and implementing GMH interventions and those critical of some of its approaches.
全球精神卫生（GMH）领域旨在影响全球的精神卫生政策与实践，重点关注人权和获得医疗服务的机会。该领域已取得重要成就，但GMH也一直是因政治、文化和务实批评而引发学术争议的焦点。这些争论日益两极分化，因此需要更多对话以及贴近经验的研究来为理论构建提供信息。民族志在这方面有很大的贡献。本文对本期《跨文化精神病学》中的五篇文章进行了框架构建和介绍，这些文章阐述了民族志方法在理解全球精神卫生领域对精神卫生政策与实践的影响及意义方面所起的作用。这些论文包括来自南非、印度和汤加的民族志，展示了民族志证据为全球精神卫生项目提供信息的潜力。这些研究对全球精神卫生在不同环境中的多样表现进行了细致入微的概念化，提出了评估全球精神卫生成就的多种方式，以及能在当地观察到的经验与更广泛的历史、政治和社会现象之间建立的联系。民族志可以为参与制定和实施全球精神卫生干预措施的人员与那些对其某些方法持批评态度的人员之间进行建设性对话提供基础。
