Divorcing mental ill health from its social and political context, as the BBC’s recent In the Mind Series did, implies wider issues of inequality or poverty don’t matter
Steve Hughes's insight:
We need to see mental health through a multifaceted contextual lens. The individual is a context and their biological functioning is one dimension of that context. So is their developmental status, personal history and behavioural and cognitive patterns. But everyone is immersed in a broad range of other contexts as Bronfenbrenner pointed out.
We need explore contexts that contribute to mental health and explore the contextual risk and protective factors in order to generate an holistic perspective of individuals and group at risk of mental health problems and or illness.
The brain is an amazing and powerful organ. Even the brain without a context can't do anything. Sick or well, impaired or damaged or diseased of entirely functional, the brain needs the rest of the body and the body needs a context too - its called living on planet earth.