Dear Reader,
Public health methodology sometimes seems ill-equipped to deal with mental disorders. Health research demands quantification, mapping patterns across complex networks of people and painstakingly collecting hard data that can help us understand cause and effect. But mental diagnoses tend to come in shades of grey, and they are often accessible only through indirect and qualitative tests.
Because mental health is associated with personality and the inner self, with the mythology of genius and the fear of the unknown, it might appear far removed from the scientific objectivity of public health. The line between mental illness and a person’s identity at times seems blurred, in a way that is wholly different from how we think about other health problems like infectious disease or a broken bone.
Yet, as Katie Johnson’s article on mental health among the homeless reminds us, psychiatric disorders are tightly linked to other widespread health problems in our society. And as Michaela Panter’s explanation of deep brain stimulation shows, mental illness is firmly grounded in the physical, tangible world common to all other kinds of health threats. Nevertheless, there are important ways in which mental illness remains distinct, and we hope to show in the pages ahead that research and treatment involve unusually strong roles not only for psychology, but also for disciplines like sociology, political theory, and even theology.
In the first four issues of PH, we tried to introduce readers to a wide array of medical technologies and political debates, to global pandemics and local dangers, and to the many professions that influence public health. This time, we chose instead to focus on mental health – a complicated, contentious, often-misunderstood subject. We hope that organizing the issue thematically will help readers understand the challenges of mental health in a more coherent way, and we plan to continue using this format in future issues of PH, exploring other topics by viewing them from a variety of perspectives.
This will be our last issue as editors-in-chief of PH. We have greatly enjoyed building on the work of the journal’s founders, while we have tried to find new ways to engage the Yale community in debating and addressing public health concerns. We look forward to watching, as students at Yale continue to join the many others who are fighting to improve global health.
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Sincerely, | |
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