China Mills

(January 2022)

Mills, C. (2022), Transcultural Psychiatry pp. 136346152110686–136346152110686. doi:10.1177/13634615211068605.

Abstract:

Based on interviews with members of the Guideline Development Group (GDG) of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) Guidelines for Mental, Neurological and Substance Use Disorders, this article adds empirical depth to understanding the contingent and strategic nature of universality in relation to mental health. Differently from debating whether or not mental health is global, the article outlines the people, ideas, and processes involved in making it global. Read more …

(January 2022)

Mills, C. (2022). Journal of Public Mental Health, 21(1), pp. 46–56. doi:10.1108/jpmh-09-2021-0124.

Abstract:

This article aims to focus on deaths by suicide in relation to UK welfare reform as a case study to question one of suicidology’s most dominant theories – the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide (Joiner, 2005) and its influential ideas on “perceived burdensomeness” – as well as wider ideologies on suicide and mental health reflected in this approach. Design/methodology/approach This article draws on evidence from disabled people’s campaigning groups (primary sources) and research literature (secondary sources), which shows the negative psychological impact of burden discourse and how this shows up in people’s accounts of feeling suicidal, in suicide notes and in family accounts of those who have died by suicide. It uses this evidence to problematise the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide (Joiner, 2005), specifically its ideas about “burden” as an individual misperception, and the assumption that suicide is always the outcome of mental health problems. Read more …

(2021)

Mills, C. and Klein, E. (2021). Economy and Society, 50(3), pp. 397–422 doi:10.1080/03085147.2021.1875692.

Abstract:
Across the political spectrum of different historical periods, welfare deterrence has shaped social security and immigration policy in both Australia and the United Kingdom. Deterrence discourages access to state welfare through the production and mobilization of negative affect to deter specific groups from claiming state support, and by crafting public affect (of fear and disgust) about these target populations in order to garner consent for punitive policies. In this paper, we argue that deterrence works as a human technology where the crafting of negative affect operates as a technology of statecraft. Through critical juxtaposition and multiple genealogies of deterrence, this paper meshes time and space, and colony/colonizer and metropole, to show the historical and contemporary connectivity of the affective nature of deterrence. We identify five main operations that produce the ‘feel’ of deterrence: stigmatization by design, destitution by design, deterrent architecture, the control of movement, and the centrality of labour; as well as tracing the political economy of deterrence. Read more …

(2018)

Mills, C. (2018). Development and Change,49(3), pp. 843–866: doi:10.1111/dech.12397

Perceptions regarding the importance of mental health are shifting at a global level. Once described as an ‘invisible problem’ in international development, mental health is now being framed as one of the most pressing development issues of our time. Concern over the historical absence of mental health from the development agenda — despite its being regarded as a major obstacle to development — has led to its recent inclusion in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article critically examines three intersecting axes key to its inclusion in the SDGs: 1) the conceptualization and calculation of the contribution of mental disorder to the global burden of disease; 2) the quantification of mental disorder as an economic burden; and 3) the relationship between mental distress and poverty. The article highlights the urgent need to foster a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between mental health and development, and shows how, at times, interventions in the two fields work together in producing reductionist, economistic, individualized and psychologized responses to poverty. Read more …

(2017)
Mills, C. (2018). Critical Social Policy, 38(2), pp. 302–322: doi:10.1177/0261018317726263

Abstract:
One of the symptoms of post financial crisis austerity in the UK has been an increase in the numbers of suicides, especially by people who have experienced welfare reform. This article develops and utilises an analytic framework of psychopolitical autopsy to explore media coverage of ‘austerity suicide’ and to take seriously the psychic life of austerity (internalisation, shame, anxiety), embedding it in a context of social dis-ease. Read more …

2017)
Howell, A., Mills, C. and Rushton, S. (2017) Globalization and Health, 13(1): doi:10.1186/s12992-017-0263-3

Abstract:
Mental health is increasingly finding a place on global health and international development agendas. Advocates for Global Mental Health (GMH), and international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, argue that treatments available in high-income countries should also be made available in low- and middle-income countries. Such arguments are often made by comparing mental health to infectious diseases, including the relative disease and economic burdens they impose, and pointing to the applicability of the right to access treatment for mental health, not only infectious diseases. HIV/AIDS advocacy in particular has been held up by GMH advocates as offering an appropriate strategy for generating global commitment. Read more …