Global Mental Health (GMH) appears as a new Open Access journal, just as ‘Global Mental Health’ emerges as a new field. It is necessary, and timely: current international survey data suggest that mental illness is a key driver of population wellbeing, with evidence suggesting that mental healthcare might be a more cost-effective investment than physical healthcare for improving that outcome (Helliwell et al. 2013). The huge and growing morbidity burden attributable to common mental conditions (Murray et al. 2012; Vos et al. 2012), and their multiplier effect on the morbidity and mortality of other medical conditions (Prince et al. 2007), have prompted governments in lowand middle-income countries (LMICs) to increasingly and more aggressively pursue scalable solutions to close mental health treatment gaps (Ssebunnya et al. 2012; http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/ aug/29/ghana-new-mental-health-bill). Mental health has increasingly become a part of the global health scientific agenda (Becker & Kleinman 2013). Among the signs of this are multiple special series on global mental health in The Lancet, a global Delphi exercise identifying research priority ‘Grand Challenges’ for global mental health reported in Nature (Horton 2007; Collins et al. 2011), a Grand Challenges Canada funding initiative to support those priorities (http://www.grandchallenges.ca/grand-challenges/gc4non-communicable-diseases/mentalhealth/), a series of annual meetings to promote and cultivate global mental health research strategies and research capacity sponsored by the US National Institute of Mental Health, and endorsement of a Global Mental Health Action Plan by the World Health Assembly (WHO 2013). In addition, early work on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), expected to replace the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 as the set of global benchmarks driving much of the world’s development investments, appears likely to include specific mental health targets and metrics for population wellbeing and happiness (Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network). So it is especially timely to be launching a scientific and research journal specific to Global Mental Health. But such a launch carries a responsibility we intend to take seriously: to be a resource for helping establish just what this new ‘field’ is, and how successful it can be. Making the compelling case for mental health is no longer enough; we need clear and globally aligning metrics and targets, delivery designs, shared technical tools and language to do mental health, packaged in ways that are readily understandable to mainstream public health and social policy, planning, and healthcare delivery. We can mobilize the scientific field of global mental health to accelerate an ambitious scale of global investment, action, and organization for mental healthcare, in the same way the globalized fields of HIV care and maternal and child health (MCH) transformed the availability of effective and scaled care for those conditions. To do this, the field needs to evolve so that it is not a niche field, but includes a broad array of expertise, including those of economists, organizational design and systems analysts, primary care providers and managers, quality improvement specialists, social media engineers, educators, users and advocates, and others beyond the usual ‘mental health’ disciplines itself. This range of expertise will especially play a key role in developing the cross-sector strategies needed to * Address for correspondence: Gary S Belkin, New York University School of Medicine. (Email: Gary.Belkin@nyumc.org)
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