Introduction: How Mental Health Matters - Anne E. Becker, Giuseppe Raviola & Arthur Kleinman

And the systems of care are just as problem-plagued, costly, and egregiously inadequate as the rest of health care.1 In high-, middle-, and low-income countries alike, half of the world’s popu- lation will develop a mental illness over the course of their lives. [...] Sev- eral of the essays contest the adequacy of biomedicine–and the scientists, other academics, and health professionals who operate within its logics–to frame the right questions and to respond to mental distress and suffering that are outcomes of historical and contemporary structural violence. [...] These include the epidemiology of mental illness preced- ing, during, and following the earliest stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the mental health and social disparities associated with poverty, racism, coloniality, and indigeneity, as well as their contributions to society-wide, and even global, morbidity and mortality. [...] Insel introduce the potentially very important role that digital technologies can play in mental health care.30 They focus on three transformative applications: the use of sensors and artificial intelligence to provide more objective assessments of mental health problems, the development of telehealth services that increase access and conve- nience for patients and providers, and the creation of d. [...] A social medicine perspective also alerts us to other potential pitfalls in the field of mental health, as they relate to the unintended consequences of our interventions and treatments, and the various manifestations of biopower–from the history of white supremacy in the United States and its ex- pression in policy, knowledge, and practice, to the role of psychiatric institutions and prisons in a.