What Insights Can Be Gained from Mental Health Policy Change in Samoa and Tonga?

Abstract

This chapter has four main aims. Firstly, I will consider whether there were different types of policy transferred as part of the mental health policy transfers discussed in the two previous chapters. Secondly, I identify the different types of actors engaged in different types of policy transfer and how they were involved. Thirdly, I explore the different roles that these actors played in localising transferred policies. Fourthly, I consider variation in the degree of localisation depending on the policy type and actors involved in transfer. There were two related questions which emerged from the research assembled here: firstly, whether the mental health policy transfers in Samoa and Tonga were similar or different. Secondly, I will address whether any of the actors involved in the examined transfer could be considered ‘policy entrepreneurs’. I provide general conclusions from the preceding chapters concerning the understanding of mental health by policy actors in Samoa and Tonga. These actors’ discussion of the different types of ‘policy’ implicated in the mental health system is then considered. The policy typology I develop from these responses and elaborate on below has been organised into three divisions: formal (laws); quasi-formal (policy statements, instruments); and informal (government actor practices in mental health service delivery).