Global Mental Health and Society MSc
Awards: MSc
Study modes: Full-time, Part-time
Funding opportunities
Placements/internships
Programme website: Global Mental Health and Society
Global Mental Health - interdisciplinary approaches at Edinburgh
Do you want to examine how mental health is understood and addressed cross-culturally across the world?
Are you interested in the social drivers of poor mental health and ways to address these?
Do you want to play a role in transforming mental health care globally?
Mental health and well-being are crucial global health and social welfare policy concerns with significant resources and research devoted to this area.
This interdisciplinary postgraduate programme offers you opportunities to develop:
- critical perspectives on global mental health policy
- practice and research
- space for creating transformative possibilities
- tools for conceptual and practice innovation
A hybrid academic discipline
Global mental health is emerging as a hybrid academic discipline with academic training programmes, journals, textbooks and research consortiums - primarily in the UK and the USA, but also in Canada and Europe.
Much of this activity has been situated in psychiatry and public health disciplines - with a growing body of scholarly work from other professional and social science disciplines including medical anthropology, social work, international development, and clinical psychology.
The role of the social sciences in global mental health is crucial to:
- further critical understandings of how conceptions of ‘distress’ and ‘mental health’ are socially, culturally and politically constructed in different contexts
- theorising the intersections between social and economic development and mental health
- developing effective interdisciplinary approaches to addressing the mental health-development interface
However, there are as yet no social science-led postgraduate global mental health programmes in the UK.
Debates in mental health care
There is increasing global and local policy emphasis on ‘standardised’ and ‘evidence-based’ approaches to mental health care, which in doing so, potentially neglect three important dimensions, namely:
- the diversity of understandings of what constitutes ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’
- the complex social, cultural and political dynamics that shape psychological distress
- the transformative value of inter- and transdisciplinary ways of thinking about and engaging with mental health
This programme will engage you in these current debates and dilemmas.
It will focus on the culturally, politically and socially situated conceptualisations of mental health and address the implications of these multiple understandings for effective policy and practice in the global south and north.
Who this programme is for
The programme is aimed at both professionals with backgrounds in:
- social work
- international development
- public health
- psychology
- nursing
- medicine
It is also aimed at graduates in:
- health studies
- psychology
- social anthropology
- international development
- other social science disciplines
We welcome applications from people with lived experience.
The MSc in Global Mental Health and Society is offered as one-year full-time or two-year part-time programme.
The programme consists of 180 credits, comprised of:
- 3 x 20-credit required core courses
- 3 x 20-credit optional courses
- a 60-credit dissertation course
You will complete six courses over two semesters from September to April. Three of these will be compulsory core courses.
Courses
Culture and Mental Health
The first core course, Culture and Mental Health, engages you in theorising and problematising key concepts such as:
- ‘mental health’
- ‘mental illness'
- ‘emotion’
- ‘trauma’
- western diagnostic categories
- ‘healing’
This course also gets you to examine their cross-cultural application in practice.
This course will draw primarily on literature from:
- medical anthropology
- psychological anthropology
- transcultural psychiatry
- cross-cultural psychology
Critical Approaches to Global Mental Health and Social Change
The second core course, Critical Approaches to Global Mental Health and Social Change, enables students to critically engage with key policy and practice debates in global mental health including:
- the framing of global mental health as a policy problem
- social, psycho-social, and biomedical interventions
- marginality and intersectionality including gender and social inequalities
- the role of communities in global mental health
- impact of war and disaster
- poverty and development
This course will draw on interdisciplinary global mental health literature including from:
- public health
- medical anthropology
- social work
- psychology
- international development
- Mad studies
- transcultural psychiatry
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Global Mental Health: Practice, Policy and Research
The third core course, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Global Mental Health: Practice, Policy and Research, focuses on the application of inter-disciplinary approaches to practice, policy and research.
You will develop skills in cross and inter-disciplinary dialogues and gain a clearer understanding of different research paradigms in global mental health.
Option courses
The other three courses are options. These may be selected from across the University, drawing on the expertise of faculty members within:
- social and political sciences
- clinical psychology
- health in social sciences
- public health
- other disciplines
Project or dissertation
From May to August you will complete either a work-based project or a standard research dissertation.
Global Mental Health Research Network
The programme will be taught by world-leading experts from Edinburgh's Global Mental Health Research Network, drawing together multiple disciplines including: medical anthropology, social work, psychology, and trans-cultural psychiatry.
You will also engage with key overseas collaborators of the Network through video, case studies and guest lectures.
Find out more about compulsory and optional courses
We link to the latest information available. Please note that this may be for a previous academic year and should be considered indicative.
Award | Title | Duration | Study mode | |
---|---|---|---|---|
MSc | 1 Year | Full-time | Programme structure 2020/21 | |
MSc | 2 Years | Part-time | Programme structure 2020/21 |
Practical experiences can complement teaching in the classroom. An integral part of this programme are work-based projects.
These consist of eight weeks of research with a host organisation in Africa, South and South East Asia, the Middle East, Latin America as well as in the UK.
Our extensive network of global mental health partners include local and global non-government organisations (NGOs) and research organisations.
Graduating from this programme will enable you to:
- critically engage with key conceptual and policy debates in global mental health, applying contextually appropriate perspectives
- apply concepts, theories and methods from a diversity of disciplines (for example, social work, medical anthropology, clinical psychology, psychiatry and development studies)
- independently apply, integrate and critically reflect upon different disciplinary approaches to global mental health
- critically assess complex societal issues from an open-minded, reflexive and reasoned perspective
- communicate effectively with a variety of audiences
- critically apply the knowledge acquired to inform future global mental health programmes, practice, policies and research
Global mental health is a growing field with significant recent and ongoing investment from multilateral development agencies and governments, in both research and implementation.
This qualification will be help prepare you for careers in global mental health policy, implementation and research.
You would also be qualified to undertake similar careers with the UK health sector.
A UK 2:1 honours degree or its international equivalent.
International qualifications
Check whether your international qualifications meet our general entry requirements:
English language requirements
You must demonstrate a level of English language competency at a level that will enable you to succeed in your studies, regardless of your nationality or country of residence.
English language tests
For 2021 entry we will accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified:
- IELTS: total 7.0 (at least 6.0 in each module)
- TOEFL-iBT (including Special Home Edition): total 100 (at least 20 in each module). We do not accept TOEFL MyBest Score to meet our English language requirements.
- CAE and CPE: total 185 (at least 169 in each module)
- Trinity ISE: ISE III with a pass in all four components
Your English language qualification must be no more than three and a half years old from the start date of the programme you are applying to study, unless you are using IELTS, TOEFL or Trinity ISE, in which case it must be no more than two years old.
Degrees taught and assessed in English
We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree that has been taught and assessed in English in a majority English speaking country, as defined by UK Visas and Immigration:
We also accept a degree that has been taught and assessed in English from a university on our list of approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries.
If you are not a national of a majority English speaking country, then your degree must be no more than three and a half years old at the beginning of your programme of study.
Find out more about our language requirements:
Award | Title | Duration | Study mode | |
---|---|---|---|---|
MSc | 1 Year | Full-time | Tuition fees | |
MSc | 2 Years | Part-time | Tuition fees |
UK government postgraduate loans
If you live in the UK, you may be able to apply for a postgraduate loan from one of the UK’s governments.
The type and amount of financial support you are eligible for will depend on:
- your programme
- the duration of your studies
- your tuition fee status
Programmes studied on a part-time intermittent basis are not eligible.
Other funding opportunities
Search for scholarships and funding opportunities:
- Postgraduate Admissions Team
- Phone: +44 (0)131 651 3064/1560
- Contact: futurestudents@ed.ac.uk
- Programme Director, Dr Sumeet Jain
- Contact: sjain@ed.ac.uk
- Graduate School of Social & Political Science
- Chrystal Macmillan Building
- 15A George Square
- Central Campus
- Edinburgh
- EH8 9LD
- Programme: Global Mental Health and Society
- School: Social & Political Science
- College: Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
- Prospectus: Social & Political Science (PDF)
Applying
Select your programme and preferred start date to begin your application.
MSc Global Mental Health and Society - 1 Year (Full-time)
MSc Global Mental Health and Society - 2 Years (Part-time)
Programme start date | Application deadline |
---|---|
13 September 2021 | 5 July 2021 |
We encourage you to apply at least one month prior to entry so that we have enough time to process your application. If you are also applying for funding or will require a visa then we strongly recommend you apply as early as possible.
References are not usually required for applications to this programme.
Find out more about the general application process for postgraduate programmes:
Further information
- Postgraduate Admissions Team
- Phone: +44 (0)131 651 3064/1560
- Contact: futurestudents@ed.ac.uk
- Programme Director, Dr Sumeet Jain
- Contact: sjain@ed.ac.uk
- Graduate School of Social & Political Science
- Chrystal Macmillan Building
- 15A George Square
- Central Campus
- Edinburgh
- EH8 9LD
- Programme: Global Mental Health and Society
- School: Social & Political Science
- College: Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
- Prospectus: Social & Political Science (PDF)