Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, influencing cognition, perception, and behavior. It likewise determines how an individual handles stress, interpersonal relationships, and decision-making. Mental health includes subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy, competence, intergenerational dependence, and self-actualization of one's intellectual and emotional potential, among others. From the perspectives of positive psychology or holism, mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and to create a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience. Cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how one defines "mental health". Some early signs related to mental health difficulties are sleep irritation, lack of energy, lack of appetite and thinking of harming yourself or others.
Medicalization is the process by which human conditions and problems come to be defined and treated as medical conditions, and thus become the subject of medical study, diagnosis, prevention, or treatment. Medicalization can be driven by new evidence or hypotheses about conditions; by changing social attitudes or economic considerations; or by the development of new medications or treatments.
Health equity arises from access to the social determinants of health, specifically from wealth, power and prestige. Individuals who have consistently been deprived of these three determinants are significantly disadvantaged from health inequities, and face worse health outcomes than those who are able to access certain resources. It is not equity to simply provide every individual with the same resources; that would be equality. In order to achieve health equity, resources must be allocated based on an individual need-based principle.
Joan Busfield, is a British sociologist and psychologist, Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex and former President of the British Sociological Association (2003–2005). Her research focuses on psychiatry and mental disorder.
The social determinants of health in poverty describe the factors that affect impoverished populations' health and health inequality. Inequalities in health stem from the conditions of people's lives, including living conditions, work environment, age, and other social factors, and how these affect people's ability to respond to illness. These conditions are also shaped by political, social, and economic structures. The majority of people around the globe do not meet their potential best health because of a "toxic combination of bad policies, economics, and politics". Daily living conditions work together with these structural drivers to result in the social determinants of health.
Dame Sarah Jane Macintyre, known as Sally Macintyre, is a British medical sociologist. She is a professor emerita at the University of Glasgow.
Joanna Moncrieff is a British psychiatrist and academic. She is Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London and a leading figure in the Critical Psychiatry Network. She is a prominent critic of the modern 'psychopharmacological' model of mental disorder and drug treatment, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry. She has written papers, books and blogs on the use and over-use of drug treatment for mental health problems, the mechanism of action of psychiatric drugs, their subjective and psychoactive effects, the history of drug treatment, and the evidence for its benefits and harms. She also writes on the history and politics of psychiatry more generally. Her best known books are The Myth of the Chemical Cure and The Bitterest Pills.
Psychiatry is, and has historically been, viewed as controversial by those under its care, as well as sociologists and psychiatrists themselves. There are a variety of reasons cited for this controversy, including the subjectivity of diagnosis, the use of diagnosis and treatment for social and political control including detaining citizens and treating them without consent, the side effects of treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy, antipsychotics and historical procedures like the lobotomy and other forms of psychosurgery or insulin shock therapy, and the history of racism within the profession in the United States.
Mary Travis Bassett is an American physician and public health researcher who was the 17th Health Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health, being appointed to the position by Governor Kathy Hochul on September 29, 2021 until December 31, 2022. From 2014 to 2018, she was the commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Bassett is the Director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and the FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is also an associate professor of clinical epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Structural competency is a term used in American health professional education to describe the ability of health care providers and trainees to appreciate how symptoms, clinical problems, diseases and attitudes toward patients, populations and health systems are influenced by 'upstream' social determinants of health.
The weathering hypothesis was proposed to account for early health deterioration as a result of cumulative exposure to experiences of social, economic and political adversity. It is well documented that minority groups and marginalized communities suffer from poorer health outcomes. This may be due to a multitude of stressors including prejudice, social alienation, institutional bias, political oppression, economic exclusion and racial discrimination. The weathering hypothesis proposes that the cumulative burden of these stressors as individuals age is "weathering," and the increased weathering experienced by minority groups compared to others can account for differences in health outcomes. In recent years, the biological plausibility of the weathering hypothesis has been investigated in studies evaluating the physiological effects of social, environmental and political stressors among marginalized communities. This has led to more widespread use of the weathering hypothesis as a framework for explaining health disparities on the basis of differential exposure to racially based stressors. Researchers have also identified patterns connecting weathering to biological phenomena associated with stress and aging, such as allostatic load, epigenetics, telomere shortening, and accelerated brain aging.
Geneticization is a term that has been widely used by critics of genetic medicine since the early 1990s. Originally coined by Abby Lippman in a series of three papers published in the 1990s, geneticization refers to the increasing tendency to define differences between individuals as largely or entirely due to genetics. This includes the growing framing and understanding of human diseases and behaviors in genetic terms. Henk A. M. J. ten Have has defined geneticization as "...a heuristic tool that can help to re-focus the moral debate on the implications of new genetic knowledge towards interpersonal relations, the power of medicine, the cultural context and social constraints, rather than emphasizing issues as personal autonomy and individual rights."
Kisha Braithwaite Holden is a scientist known for her research on mental health of African-Americans and members of other minority groups. She is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and community health & preventive medicine and interim director of Satcher Health Leadership Institute (SHLI) at Morehouse School of Medicine.
Chandra L. Ford is an American public health academic who is Professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. She serves as Founding Director at the Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health. Her research considers relationships between racism and health outcomes.
Dawnette Ethilda Edge is a British medical researcher who is a Professor of Mental Health and Inclusivity at the University of Manchester. Her research investigates racial inequalities in mental health, including the origins of the overdiagnosis of schizophrenia in British African-Caribbean people.
Glenda Marlene MacQueen was a Canadian medical researcher and medical college professor and administrator. She was vice-dean of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary from 2012 to 2019.
White Americans, as the largest racial group in the United States, have historically had better health outcomes than other oppressed racial groups in America. However, in recent years, the scholarly discourse has switched from recognition of the immense positive health outcomes of white Americans towards understanding the growing persistence of negative outcomes unique to this racial group. Scholars have discussed the effects of racial prejudice and its negative effect on health outcomes to not only those being oppressed but also those being given privileges. In addition to the effects of living in a racialized society, white Americans have the highest rate of suicide and lifetime psychiatric disorders of any other ethnicity or racial category. In conjunction with these psychiatric issues, the population presents higher rates of alcohol usage alongside lower levels of psychological flourishing. Given this information, the health status of white Americans has gained increasing importance due to the differences in health outcomes between white Americans and white people from other parts of the world.
Kirsten McCaffery is a British-Australian public health researcher who is Principal Research Fellow and Director of Research at the Sydney School of Public Health. Her research considers the psychosocial aspects of over diagnosis in healthcare. She was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2020.
Ana Abraído-Lanza is an American behavioral psychologist who is a professor at the New York University. Her research considers the cultural and structural factors that impact mental and physical health amongst Latino communities. She serves as Vice Dean of the School of Public Health.
Patricia Kingori is a British Kenyan sociologist who is a professor at the University of Oxford. Her research considers the experiences of frontline health workers around the world. She is particularly interested in misinformation and pseudoscience. In 2015, Kingori was included on the Powerlist.
