Economic development and mental illness

Subsequent studies have confirmed that patients in the developing world are much more likely to recover from severe mental illness than patients in the richer countries, well served by psychiatrists and clinical psychologists.

That is from Richard P. Bentall's Doctoring the Mind: Is Our Current Treatment of Mental Illness Any Good?  You can think of this book as an updated, more traditionally empirical, less polemic version of Thomas Szasz.  It makes large claims which are difficult to evaluate.  Ultimately I don't find that it offers a persuasive alternative framework for thinking about either mental illness or "mental illness."  Nonetheless the book is stimulating, it relies on substantive argument, and it will induce skepticism about a lot of what passes for treatment these days.  Here is one review of the book, here is another.