Understanding and awareness of mental health and well-being are rapidly increasing around the world. Nonetheless, huge gaps remain, particularly deficiencies in recognizing and redressing mental health and well-being concerns.
The issues are clinical and beyond. Far too many countries experience a devastating shortage of trained and qualified psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors, and therapists. Even where staffing and qualifications suffice, many people cannot access these services. Meanwhile, many non-clinical health specialists across research, policy, and practice lack the training and experience to incorporate mental health and well-being into their work.
Against this backdrop, many cultures are open about mental health conditions, whereas others do not accept them as being diagnosable and treatable, or even as existing. Wording, connotations, and interpretations change among professionals, too. Some refer to “disorders,” while others prefer “illnesses,” or, as used here, “conditions.”
The field of global mental health and well-being defines, investigates, and aims to resolve these challenges. The focus is on addressing differences in how mental health and well-being are viewed and dealt with, locally to globally. And, most importantly, ensuring that those most affected are partners in building and maintaining systems of prevention and response.
Master’s in Global Mental Health
My colleagues at University College London (UCL) in the U.K., Rochelle Burgess and Kelly Rose-Clarke, have stepped up to act on addressing the differences in understanding and dealing with mental health and wellbeing—and to inspire others to do so. They created a Master of Science in Global Mental Health, to be run for the first time, starting in October 2026. The course lasts for one year, as is standard for U.K. Master’s degrees.
The baseline of the classroom material is courses speaking to inequalities and inequities. Healthcare and health systems around the world are marked by disparities in opportunities to use them and in how people are treated within them. Mental health and well-being are no different, especially due to stigmas about the topic and it sometimes being seen as secondary to physical healing.
Throughout the degree, realities of politics, metrics, and other barriers to policies and practices are balanced by theories of global mental health and mental health management. Since UCL is a research-intensive university, all teaching is steeped in the latest, cutting-edge science, typically as led and published by the academics doing the teaching.
A significant component of this degree is a dissertation. Each student must complete a substantive, independent piece of research of the quality of a peer-reviewed scientific paper. Students are trained not only in the classroom, but also to develop skills in thinking and acting independently.
Supporting Global Mental Health
These skills serve across a gamut of jobs and careers because not all graduates necessarily wish to step into global mental health and well-being positions. The key is very much “understanding and awareness”—bringing to the world the importance of dealing with mental health and well-being alongside addressing inequalities and inequities.
Any health specialist, whether a health policy analyst or a cardiologist, ought to know about and consider mental health and well-being, for themselves and for others, in their day-to-day work. In any profession, at home, and throughout daily life, being a mental health first-aider contributes anytime and anywhere, from the U.K. to Bangladesh.
The foundation, as with all health and well-being, is that prevention is better (and cheaper) than cure. By talking and exchanging about mental health and well-being—including being able to communicate feelings, signs, and symptoms across languages and cultures—potential major difficulties can be identified and rectified before they become actual major difficulties.
Global mental health higher education, relating and applying this topic’s latest scientific findings, is a significant contribution toward continuing cross-cultural improvements in everyone’s mental health and well-being.
