ABSTRACT
The emergence of the field of Global Mental Health (GMH) in the last ten years has had a significant influence on the orientation and development of discourses around mental health in the Global South. A key moment was the launch of the 2007 Lancet Global Mental Health series (Patel 2012), which set out an agenda for action to address the 'burden' of mental disorders. Linked to this was the emergence of the Movement for Global Mental Health (MGMH), driven by key architects of the Lancet series and supported by key international mental health institutions such as the Institute of Psychiatry, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the World Health Organization (WHO). The development of MGMH and the evolution of GMH as a discipline position it as a largely top-down venture. The notions of ownership, capacity and sustainability remain glaringly absent from GMH and its discourse.
