Every four years, the US National Intelligence Council (NIC), known for its ties to the Central Intelligence Agency, releases a report outlining the main changes to be expected in the world in the next two decades. Following this tradition, after the election of Joe Biden, a new report was published in March 2021: Global Trends 2040. It includes a short mention of mental health.

Three causes are evoked for the rising prevalence of mental disorders: population growth, probably because it induces an increase of the absolute number of people living with mental illness, adolescent suffering and COVID-19. Most, if not all policy documents we could find approach mental health as a growing, costly problem for which few responses exist except recruiting more specialized professionals, making mental health services more ‘effective’ and ‘accessible’, and, tacitly, responsibilizing populations to manage their own distress – with increased focus on building ‘resilience’ and promoting ‘recovery’ (Harper and Speed, 2014). ‘Evidence-based’ policies then evaluate the ‘efficiency’ of these programmes and keep the most cost-effective ones, ignoring that beyond the help and relief these services certainly offer for many people suffering from mental disorders and their relatives, at a societal level, diagnosed mental disorders keep rising everywhere, no matter how cost-effective such services are.