Objectives: Reflect on the evolution of global mental health (GMH) approaches in the last fifteen years and their application to policies and services, particularly in Latin-American. Describe and explain mental health impacts of the worldwide crisis and the challenges that they represent for the countries of the sub region. Topics addressed: As discourses and approaches in GMH evolved to focus more on social determinants of mental health and materialize the Sustainable Developmental Goals, communities become increasingly important in Latin-American mental health systems. However, global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change demonstrated that the mental health of vulnerable populations, including people with mental illness and rural and indigenous populations, were disproportionately affected, exacerbating already existing inequalities in access to appropriate care and ...