HP432      Half Unit
Mental Health Policy

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Additional requisites:

Students are required to have some knowledge of health systems or mental health issues. 

The aim of this course is to consider how public policy can be shaped to address the many personal, social and economic challenges posed by mental illnesses, across the full life-course (indeed, some mental illnesses start earlier, with origins in the womb). Mental health will be considered in a range of contexts: high-, medium- and low-income settings. An important emphasis will be on the global nature of the challenges, and the need to find responses that have relevance across different societies and in different contexts.
The strong associations with disadvantage will also be a core theme running through the course, linked to social and other determinants of (mental) health. Other key areas of policy-making will be covered, including how decision-making balances the roles of different stakeholders, particularly individuals with lived experience of mental illness, families and communities. We will look at whether and how policy decisions are based on considerations of (and evidence about) the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and viability of treatments, and the social impact of prevention and interventions in different cultural contexts and at different life-stages.
Students will discuss issues and strategies on how public policy – not just in the health sector but more widely – can play crucial roles in prevention (or at least risk-reduction), access to and funding of treatments and therapies, recovery and re-integration, social and economic inclusion. Some of the material in the course will be based on research recently undertaken or currently underway at LSE.

Course outline (by week)

1. What is Mental Illness? 

2. Responses? What are the Societal and Policy Responses to Mental Illness? 

3. Mental Illness in Early Life

4. Early Intervention in Youth: Focus on Psychosis

5. Stigma, Mental Capacity and Human Rights

6. Knowing Our Own Minds: Learning From UK Survivor Movements

7. Developing Youth Mental Health Services Across Contexts

8. Old Age Mental Health

9. Global Mental health, Poverty and Socio-Economic Disadvantage

10. Enduring Challenges for Mental Health Policy

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

The course will be delivered in no less that 20 hours and consists of lectures and seminars delivered in the Winter Term.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the Winter Term (of up to 1500 words) during the course, which could be linked to the topic of their group-based project.

• Killackey E, Hodges C, Browne V et al. (2020) A global framework for youth mental health: investing in future mental capital for individuals, communities and economies. In Geneva: World Economic Forum.
• Knapp M, Iemmi V (2016) Mental health. In Scheffler R (ed.) Global Handbook of Health Economics. World Scientific Press.
• Knapp M, Wong G (2020) Economics and mental health: the current scenario. World Psychiatry 19(1):3-14.
•  Lund C, De Silva M, Plagerson S et al. (2011) Poverty and mental disorders: breaking the cycle in low-income and middle-income countries. The Lancet 378(9801):1502‐1514.
• Leamy M, Bird V, Le Boutillier C et al. (2011) Conceptual framework for personal recovery in mental health: systematic review and narrative synthesis. British Journal of Psychiatry 199(6):445-452.
• Patel V, Saxena S, Lund C et al (2018) The Lancet Commission on global mental health and sustainable development. Lancet 392(10157):1553-1598.
• Prince M, Patel V, Saxena S et al (2007) No health without mental health. Lancet 370(9590):859-877.
• Saxena S, Thornicroft G, Knapp M, Whiteford H (2007) Resources for mental health: scarcity, inequity and inefficiency. The Lancet 370(9590):878-889.
• Thornicroft G, Sunkel C, Alikhon Aliev A et al. (2022) The Lancet Commission on ending stigma and discrimination in mental health. Lancet 400(10361):1438-1480.
• Voronka J (2019) Storytelling beyond the psychiatric gaze: resisting resilience and recovery narratives. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies 8(4):8-30. 
• Wessley S et al (2018) Modernising the Mental Health Act: increasing choice, reducing compulsion.  London.

Essay (100%, 3000 words)