Mental health is incorporated into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is mentioned in three targets within goal three, emphasizing the prevention and treatment of mental health. This incorporation recognizes that mental health is health. Many people globally are affected by mental health. They experience a lack of access to treatment, may not be fully integrated into society which limits economic participation, and have their human rights violated through incarceration and, sometimes, torture. For societies to experience sustainable development, healthcare as a right that fully integrates mental health as part of the equation must be incorporated.
Mental health, according to the 2016 Lancet Commission, is the most neglected of all human health conditions. Anthropology has long researched issues related to mental health going back to culture and personality studies, culture-bound syndromes, and the newer burgeoning studies of global mental health. Culture and psychiatry have also been a part of the anthropological literature related to mental health. The DSM V incorporates a section titled “cultural conceptualizations of distress” and indicates that assessment of coping and help-seeking patterns should consider the use of professional as well as traditional, alternative, or complementary sources of care (p. 750). Incorporating an anthropological lens into this part of the SDGs can increase the efficacy of already available indigenous and culturally appropriate interventions. The anthropological holistic understanding of how culture plays a role in the interpretation of assessment of disorders, as well as the treatment of disorders, and the type of support that people who are experiencing distress need to be incorporated into these mental health initiatives. This paper addresses the importance of how anthropology can positively influence on-ground development initiatives related to mental health services in places where there is a limited or lacks on-ground mental health infrastructure.
