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There is growing recognition that "human development" frameworks, such as the Capabilities Approach (CA) with its emphasis on the promotion of justice, offer promise for guiding efforts aimed at enhancing mental wellbeing. This article explores challenges that might arise when there is a need to arbitrate among the competing demands of different parties in their efforts to enhance capabilities. Particular tensions can arise when the efforts of particular individuals to enhance their capabilities exert pressure on scarce resources, or threaten the safety and security of people living in precarious environmental contexts. Consideration is given to the need for "an ethos of restraint" to balance the consumption of resources aimed at facilitating human development on the one hand, with the need to promote environmental justice on the other. The paper highlights research that has investigated how environmental factors can impact on mental wellbeing, including rapid urbanization, climate change related issues (such as weather systems, drought, food insecurity and rising sea-levels), and access to "green/blue spaces". As such, the paper explores the important links that can exist between people and the ecosystems in which they live (including the way in which particular cultural beliefs and practices of indigenous groups can be tethered to the land). Elinor Ostrom's "design principles", derived from her work investigating the sustainable use of pooled resources, are presented as a helpful means of assisting members of communities to negotiate and apply "functioning constraints", which can promote environmental justice whilst not compromising efforts aimed at promoting mental wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the globe there is a critical need for culturally informed and locally valid approaches to mental health assessment and intervention, particularly among disadvantaged and marginalized populations. To be optimally effective, such approaches must be informed by a sound understanding of locally relevant idioms of distress and its determinants, including those caused or exacerbated by global power disparities and structural inequities. Climate change, arising due to anthropogenic sources located predominantly in industrialized nations, is one potential determinant of distress having disproportionate adverse impacts on already marginalized populations. The present study formed part of a broader project examining the intersections of culture, climate change, and distress in the Polynesian nation of Tuvalu – a focal point of global concern over the human costs of climate change. The study explored determinants and idioms of distress and culturally prescribed responses to coping with distress. Results are based on fieldwork conducted in 2015 entailing semi-structured interviews with 16 key informants and 23 lay residents of Funafuti atoll, recruited using maximal variation purposive sampling. Findings are examined in consideration of the unfolding impacts of climate change and the threat it portends for the future, both of which were identified as salient determinants of distress, in keeping with theorized relationships between climate change and mental health. The study underscores the necessity of attending to the relationships between global forces, local cultures, and individual experiences of distress, as efforts to provide access to culturally informed social and mental health services expand globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]