Globalization and mental health: a systematic review of the literature

Objective (s): It has been suggested that globalisation could affect public’s health in different ways. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between globalisation and mental health. A review was undertaken of all the full publications in the English language and Persian biomedical journals up to 2012. The search was limited to globalisation and included the combination of keywords ‘mental health’, ‘mental disorders’ ‘psychological health’, ‘psychological disorders’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’ that appeared in the titles and abstracts of the publications. A manual search was also performed to include additional papers of potential interest. In all 244 citations were identified. After through examination and excluding duplicates, 22 citations on the relationship between globalisation and mental health were found to be relevant and were further examined. The findings are summarized under different headings and presented in different tables. With few exceptions, the findings showed that mental health or some aspects of mental health were affected due to globalisation. Depression, anxiety, identity problems, and suicide, individually or in combination, were the most important negative consequences of globalisation. Overall this review provides evidence for a negative relationship between globalisation and mental health. Further studies in this emerging issue are recommended.