Isabel M. Perera | Why Mental Health Care Varies Across Affluent Democracies

The Moynihan Institute’s Study of Global Politics series presents Isabel M. Perera from Cornell University.

The Welfare Workforce is a thought-provoking exploration of mental health care in the United States and beyond. Although all the affluent democracies pursued deinstitutionalization, some failed to provide adequate services, while others overcame challenges of stigma and limited resources and successfully expanded care.

Isabel M. Perera examines the role of the “welfare workforce” in providing social services to those who cannot demand them. Drawing on extensive research in four countries—the United States, France, Norway and Sweden—Perera sheds light on post-industrial politics and the critical part played by those who work for the welfare state. A must-read for anyone interested in mental health care, social services and the politics of welfare, The Welfare Workforce challenges conventional wisdom and offers new insights into the complex factors that contribute to the success or failure of mental health care systems. 

Isabel M. Perera is an assistant professor in the Department of Government. She studies how politics shape the social policies, labor markets and overall economies of affluent democracies, focusing on the United States and Western Europe.

Prior to joining Cornell, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine (2018-2020), Queen Elizabeth Fellow at the University of Oxford (2016-2017), and Chateaubriand Fellow at Sciences Po Paris (2015-2016). She holds a doctorate from Penn and an undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins.