In this talk, our own Craig Katz will talk about the mental health gap—the gaping disparity that exists between mental health needs around the world and the too often neglected resources to meet those needs. This will involve talking about the gap through a brief lecture and trying to bring it alive through a reading of select chapters from his narrative book, Unseen: Field Notes of a Global Psychiatrist.

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CRAIG L. KATZ is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Medical Education, and System Design and Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, USA, and the founder and director of Mount Sinai’s Program in Global Mental Health. Inspired by their chance involvement in helping families following the fatal crash of Swiss Air Flight 111 in 1998, Dr. Katz and his colleagues co-founded Disaster Psychiatry Outreach (DPO), with him as its president, to utilize psychiatrists to help disaster-affected communities. This foresight later enabled DPO to organize hundreds of psychiatrists to provide support and care after 9/11. However, when DPO ventured to overseas places like post-tsunami Sri Lanka in early 2005, he was dismayed by how underserved mental health needs were even before the disasters. He decided he no longer wanted to wait for disaster to strike and founded the Mount Sinai Program in Global Mental Health to try to improve everyday access to mental health care for everyone, everywhere.