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2021 May Newsletter May is Mental Health Month! Mental Health Awareness month was launched in 1949 by Mental Health America, and each year the organization announces a theme and materials to educate the public about mental illnesses, bring attention to people with lived experience, and to promote strategies for sustaining mental health. This year’s theme is #Tools2Thrive and continues last year’s efforts to help the population cope with the stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Me You Can’t See Mental…

2021 April Newsletter Spotlight: UW eDGH New Global Mental Health Course UW Global Mental Health Program, in collaboration with eDGH, recently launched a new online course on Global Mental Health for health professionals around the world. Developed by Dr. Christopher Kemp and Dr. Deepa Rao, this 10-week course covered key issues in global mental health, such as social determinants of mental health, stigma associated with mental health conditions,  promotion of positive mental health, assessment, prevention, treatment of disorders, and integrated…

Link to full newsletter here Perspectives from GMH Faculty on racial justice and sustainable change June 2020 was an historic month in Seattle and around the world as protests against police brutality and in support of Black lives expanded. In Seattle, as elsewhere, a space opened for Black students, staff and faculty in our university to verbalize their experiences of racism writ large and to be heard in a new way. This moment has also provided an opportunity for all…

Digital Solutions to Mental Health Needs in the United States Mental Health in the Digital Age Videoconferencing with a psychiatrist, a pill that is tracked by a smartphone app when swallowed, and virtual reality treatments are all ways in which technology is rapidly transforming mental healthcare. Digital health is a booming sector that helps close the gaps in many high-income countries and low- or middle-income countries alike, and the focus on mental health in particular has exploded in recent years….

Perspectives from Seattle: COVID-19 and Mental Health The current COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in widespread recommendations or mandates for physical distancing in countries across the globe. Stay-at-home orders, school closures, and abrupt changes to behavioral patterns have left millions with disrupted social networks. Although the literature on the mental health effects of epidemics is limited and focuses primarily on the disease itself, we know that large-scale economic or social disruptions and group traumatic experiences can lead to a variety of…

Changing the Mental Health System from the Bottom Up: The Friendship Bench “Bottom-Up” Implementation: The Friendship Bench Worldwide, 80% of individuals with common mental illnesses reside in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), but LMICs, on average, allocate less than 0.5% of their national budgets on mental healthcare, while high income countries typically spend over 5% (1,2). In most LMIC settings there is a profound lack of mental health policy development and implementation to address the significant need for mental healthcare…

Featured Topic: Introduction to Global Mental Health at UW The last decade was one of considerable change and development for the global mental health field. In 2007, The Lancet medical journal featured a series of articles related to global mental health, marking a “call to action” that is widely considered to be a catalyst for the growth in visibility and legitimacy of mental health as an important focus of global health work.1 In 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the Mental Health Gap Action Program (mhGAP),…