Autism and the Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health

There is increasing recognition of the global burden related to mental and neurological conditions greatly surpassing many health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. Recently, partnership among leading funders and academics has given rise to the grand challenges in global mental health initiative, aiming to reduce the global burden associated with mental and neurological conditions [Collins et al., 2011]. Among the actions of this initiative was a priority-setting exercise to articulate the most pressing challenges research in this area needs to address. Representing a diverse group of researchers and practitioners, we collectively considered progress and barriers in these priorities as they apply to autism research. In this editorial, we describe, based on our knowledge of and direct experience with…