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 for different communities.

The strong associations with disadvantage will 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, the distributional consequences, and the social impact of prevention and interventions in different cultural contexts and at different life-stages.

We will discuss how policy strategies – not just in the health sector but more widely across other policy and societal sectors – can play crucial roles in prevention (or at least risk-reduction), access to and funding of treatments, recovery and re-integration, social and economic inclusion, equity, and so on. Some of the material in the course will be based on recent or current LSE research.