Global Mental Health

ListenUp Initiative for Youth Wellbeing

ListenUp Initiative logo (McGill Crest separated by a vertical line fromt the words: "ListenUp Initiatives for Youth Wellbeing"Based at McGill’s School of Population and Global Health, the ListenUp Initiative for Youth Wellbeing identifies and addresses crucial gaps in evidence informing youth mental health and wellbeing policy priorities and approaches. Championing youth-led research, ListenUp convenes an international and highly cross-disciplinary group of faculty and students from McGill and beyond, with policy makers, youth organizations, as well as international partners including the African Population and Health Research Centre, the Young Foundation, MHSPP Network and the BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health. Co-facilitated by Alayne Adams, student engagement in its various research initiatives is welcome.

ListenUp webpage

Global Mental Health Program

The McGill Global Mental Health Program logoThe McGill Global Mental Health Program (GMHP) is a multidisciplinary initiative that aims to foster collaborative action research, capacity building, and knowledge exchange to address the disparities in mental health in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC).

The program builds on McGill’s longstanding engagement with cultural psychiatry by bringing the methods and perspectives of social sciences and mental health practice to bear on understanding and responding to mental health problems in international contexts.  The program is based in the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry with a steering community that includes faculty from anthropology, epidemiology, family medicine, law, physical and occupational therapy, psychiatry, psychology, social studies of medicine, and social work.

The program holds monthly rounds in global mental health, training opportunities for students including an annual summer school, promotes interdisciplinary research, and provides consultation.

View videos of our past lectures and courses


Global Mental Health at the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry

Mental health disorders such as depression are among the 20 leading causes of disability worldwide. Depression affects around 300 million people worldwide. Fewer than half of those people affected have access to adequate treatment. The Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry is a network of scholars and clinicians within the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, devoted to promoting research, training and consultation in social and cultural psychiatry.

Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry website

The main research centres in the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry are:

  • Culture and Mental Health Research Unit at Jewish General Hospital: This research unit conducts research on the mental health of Indigenous peoples, mental health services for immigrants and refugees, cultural determinants of health behaviours, psychiatry in medicine, and the anthropology of psychiatry.
  • Immigrant and Refugee Children's Mental Health Research Unit: This unit conducts research on risk and protective factors, family separation and reunification, migratory myths of young refugees, and evaluation of school programs for refugee children and adolescents.
  • Global Mental Health: The mission of this group is aimed at fostering research, capacity building and knowledge transfer in the field of global mental health, with the ultimate objective of maximizing the global mental health research capacity for innovation in low- and middle-income countries and contribute to effective knowledge transfer in global mental health at local, regional, and global levels.

    McGill GHP Logo (McGill crest separated by a vertical bar from a purple globe and a partial arc with "McGill Global health Programs" in English & French)

McGill University is located on land which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst Indigenous Peoples, including the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabeg Nations. McGill honours, recognizes, and respects these nations as the traditional stewards of the lands and waters on which peoples of the world now gather. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous Peoples from across Turtle Island. We are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

Learn more about Indigenous Initiatives at McGill.

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