Abstract

This article analyzes available data on high prevalence of mental disorders and a possible increase in recent decades. Interpreting meaning in different ways is discussed. Psychiatric and social determinants perspectives are contrasted against critical perspectives addressing the role of socio-cultural factors in what is understood, expressed, and recognized as mental disorder. We argue that—from critical perspectives—the analysis on current high prevalence of mental disorders should consider how the mental health field has grown as a central context. Changes in conceptions, values, and practices of professionals and users have occurred concomitantly. All these have led to a social psychiatrization process. Ignoring this context may lead to misinterpretation of people’s discomfort and suffering today and particularly, of new generations’, reinforcing the social psychiatrization process with eventual iatrogenic consequences. Critical approaches in this direction have been pointed out for decades but they have had little effective impact on the dominant framework of the mental health field. Greater attention to these approaches is especially relevant today given the accentuated social concern about a sort of “mental health crisis” and the importance of appropriately interpreting implications.