“Community” has become a central organizing concept in contemporary mental health policy, widely promoted as a humane alternative to institutional psychiatry and a pathway to social inclusion. Yet community mental health (CMH) has taken divergent forms across national contexts, shaped by distinct histories of psychiatry, welfare regimes, disability movements, and state governance. In some settings, community-based reforms have redistributed authority beyond psychiatric institutions; in others, they have been marked by fragmentation, underfunding, or the persistence of institutional logics within ostensibly community frameworks. Moreover, as CMH models circulate transnationally, they are translated and reconfigured through local administrative structures, professional hierarchies, and political priorities.
This two-day workshop convenes historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and mental health scholars to examine CMH in comparative and transnational perspective. Through pre-circulated papers and sustained discussion, participants will analyze the formation, translation, and contestation of community-based models across regions. The workshop is designed not only to advance conceptual and empirical debates but also to generate collective publications, including a proposed special issue or edited volume, and to develop collaborative proposals for more in-depth, externally funded research on the global politics of community mental health.