Evidence that counts. Epistemic injustices in the global mental health agenda

Abstract

Biomedicine constitutes an expert system that has garnered important attention regarding the epistemic injustices that it spawns. A considerable amount of literature has been produced, which analyzes both medical knowledge and practice and the perpetration of epistemic injustices of different classes. This paper tackles a particular case in this realm: Global Mental Health, a multilateral and interinstitutional enterprise whose main goal is to scale mental health attention in middle- and lower-income countries. The analysis targets the epistemic assumptions that underlie the expert knowledges which coalesced in the construction of this agenda, the concepts of health-sickness processes that they generate, and a discussion of why said concepts are epistemically unjust.