Beyond the Clinic: Population Approaches to Mental Health Promotion

Individualized and reactive approaches to mental health treatment neglect the broad array of structural factors that critically impact possibilities for human well-being and prevent the emergence of mental illness. With high rates of psychotropic medication use, rising suicide rates, and ongoing opioid and drug overdose epidemics, many see the U.S. mental health care system as broken.This course explores the potential of population-level mental health promotion interventions that address social determinants of health, early developmental context, minority stress, exposure to carceral systems, and social isolation/loneliness. We will work to consider the role that these social and structural influences and interventions might appropriately play in the context of a more coordinated mental health promotion agenda for the United States.