This document discusses perspectives on mental health from different cultures and societies. It begins by defining perspective and examining how people can hold multiple, sometimes contradictory beliefs about mental illness. It then explores how perspectives vary between psychiatrists, physicians, and public health specialists based on their disciplines. The document also defines stigma and discrimination related to mental illness, and how cultural and religious teachings can influence beliefs about the causes and nature of mental illness. Finally, it reviews how attitudes toward mental illness differ among individuals, families, ethnicities, cultures and countries.

1. PERSPECTIVES OF MENTAL HEALTH
 DEFINITION:
- a particular attitude towards or way of regarding
something; a point of view.
 Here it means view of or view regarding menta
health among the people/society.

2. 1. People seem to simultaneously hold multiple
and contradictory illness beliefs and seek help
from diverse sources of cure and healing.
2. Explanatory models elicited at baseline do not
predict outcomes of illness, change over time,
and are dependent on the interaction between the
trajectory of individual's illness and the
sociocultural milieu.
3. Illness narratives contextualize the patient,
describe the patient's reality and his/her ways of
coping, and attempt to make sense of illness
experiences, control them, and improve quality
of life.

3.  On the other hand,
1. diversity of beliefs among psychiatrists, family
physicians, and public health specialists is dependent
on their disciplinary perspectives.
2. Nevertheless, the variability within psychiatric
syndromes and the inability to predict individual
trajectories of illness support cultural beliefs about
uncertainties of life.
3. These are identified by cultures through idioms and
metaphors and labeled as luck, chance, karma, fate,
punishment by God, evil spirits, black magic, disease
and so on.

4. STIGMA, DISCRIMINATION, AND MENTAL
HEALTH
 Definition of stigma:
 Mental illness stigma is defined as the “devaluing,
disgracing, and disfavoring by the general public of
individuals with mental illnesses”.
 Stigma often leads to discrimination, or the
inequitable treatment of individuals and the denial of
the “rights and responsibilities that accompany full
citizenship”.
 Stigmatization can cause individual discrimination,
which occurs when a stigmatized person is directly
denied a resource (e.g. access to housing or a job),
and structural discrimination, which describes
disadvantages stigmatized people experience at the

5.  In addition, stigma can prevent mentally ill
individuals from seeking treatment, adhering to
treatment regimens, finding employment, and living
successfully in community settings.
 In 2001, the World Health Organization (WHO)
identified stigma and discrimination towards
mentally ill individuals as “the single most important
barrier to overcome in the community”, and the
WHO’s Mental Health Global Action Programme
(mhGAP) cited advocacy against stigma and
discrimination as one of its four core strategies for
improving the state of global mental health.

6. CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON MENTAL ILLNESS
 Attitudes toward mental illness vary among
individuals, families, ethnicities, cultures, and
countries.
 Cultural and religious teachings often influence
beliefs about the origins and nature of mental illness,
and shape attitudes towards the mentally ill.
 In addition to influencing whether mentally ill
individuals experience social stigma, beliefs about
mental illness can affect patients’ readiness and
willingness to seek and adhere to treatment.

7. CONTINUE..
 Therefore, understanding individual and cultural
beliefs about mental illness is essential for the
implementation of effective approaches to mental
health care. Although each individual’s
experience with mental illness is unique, the
following studies offer a sample of cultural
perspectives on mental illness.

8. RESEARCH REVIEW:
 A review of ethnocultural beliefs and mental illness
stigma by Abdullah et al. (2011) highlights the wide
range of cultural beliefs surrounding mental health.
For instance, while some American Indian tribes do
not stigmatize mental illness, others stigmatize only
some mental illnesses, and other tribes stigmatize all
mental illnesses.
 In Asia, where many cultures value “conformity to
norms, emotional self-control, [and] family
recognition through achievement”, mental illnesses
are often stigmatized and seen as a source of shame.