This timely volume analyzes the growing burden of mental, behavioral and social problems in low-income countries, examines the sources of the substantial morbidity rates and their relation to development, and assesses current efforts to cope with them. It identifies opportunities for effective mental health interventions, methods of treatment, culturally appropriate prevention programs, and sound policy formation. It relates the mental health consequences of violence, dislocation, poverty, and the disenfranchisement of women to the most pressing economic, political, and environmental problems of our time.
Robert Desjarlais is an award-winning anthropologist and writer teaching at Sarah Lawrence College. His many books include Subject to Death: Life and Loss in a Buddhist World (Chicago, 2016), Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chessboard (California, 2011), and Shelter Blues: Sanity and Selfhood Among the Homeless (Penn, 1997).