Minding the World’s Mental Health

Wednesday, January 22, 2025
11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. EST

Location: Online (4:00 p.m. - 5:15 p.m. GMT)

Despite growing awareness and greater dialogue about mental health and individual and societal well-being, significant challenges persist around the world, including deeply rooted stigmas that discourage open and supportive conversations, shortcomings in public policy, financial barriers limiting access to care, and health disparities affecting marginalized and vulnerable populations. Alongside so many other dramatic and urgent crises of the moment, how can the international community work to diminish the broad reluctance to deal with these issues openly and honestly, promote mental well-being globally, and strengthen policies while improving access to essential resources? Can we keep the topic out of politics and encourage free and honest exchanges about it?

This event is co-sponsored by the Free Speech Project (Georgetown University) and the Future of the Humanities Project (Georgetown University and Blackfriars Hall and Campion Hall, Oxford).

Featured

Pippa Hockton trained in psychotherapy at University of Birmingham. She practiced as a psychotherapist at the Royal Free Hospital in London before founding registered charity Street Talk in 2005. Street Talk takes psychotherapy to women in street prostitution and to women who have been the victims of traffickers.

Mario Kreft is the founder of the multi-award winning care organization Pendine Park, which runs eight care homes and an in-house training academy in North Wales. In 2010, he was awarded an MBE for his services to social care and has received the Welsh Government’s St. David Award for enterprise. He was appointed to the advisory board established by the Welsh government’s Economy and Transport Ministry.

Karen D. Lincoln directs the Center for Environmental Health Disparities Research in the Program in Public Health at the University of California, Irvine. A social worker and sociologist with expertise in social determinants of health disparities, she conducts research on how to improve health outcomes for Black Americans, older adults, and other minoritized persons by investigating the psychosocial, behavioral, and biological mechanisms that link social determinants to health and well-being.

Nora D. Volkow directs the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. NIDA is the world’s largest funder of scientific research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction. Her work has been instrumental in demonstrating that drug addiction is a brain disorder. As a research psychiatrist, she pioneered the use of brain imaging to investigate how substance use affects brain functions. Her studies have documented how changes in the dopamine system affect the functions of brain regions involved with reward and self-control in addiction.

Michael Scott (moderator) is senior dean, fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, college adviser for postgraduate students, and a member of the Las Casas Institute. He also serves as senior adviser to the president of Georgetown University. Scott previously was the pro-vice-chancellor at De Montfort University and founding vice-chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University.

Sanford J. Ungar (moderator), president emeritus of Goucher College, is director of the Free Speech Project at Georgetown University, which documents challenges to free expression in American education, government, and civil society. Director of the Voice of America under President Bill Clinton, he was also dean of the American University School of Communication and is a former co-host of "All Things Considered" on NPR.