Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

Ursula Read is a research fellow and associate at King's College London. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from University College London, where she studied family experiences of mental illness and help-seeking and Ghana. Currently, her research addresses Global Mental Health, and she utilizes participatory research methods to explore the relationship between mental illness and social exclusion internationally.

Her recent work focuses on mental health care in Ghana, drawing attention to the need for rights-based approaches to mental health care. In doing so, she questions the movement for Global Mental Health: asking what this movement is doing currently and imagining what it could become.

Her research brings to light how those in the Global North and high-income countries can overlook what rights-based approaches to mental health care may actually look like when incorporated into Global Mental Health and enacted on the ground. She also is deeply concerned with the structural and social determinants of health and mental health and their interconnection with community resources, places of worship, faith, and overall health promotion.