Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
This chapter draws together the research and evidence set out throughout the preceding chapters. It summarises the suggestions for changes to policies and practice set out in Chapters 5, 6 and 7.
Chapter 2 focuses on the social causation pathway between income and mental health. Using diary entries written by parents and carers living on low incomes during the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis, the chapter explores the role of income-related drivers of stress and mental health problems, including debt and food insecurity. The chapter discusses the support available to people living on low incomes who are accessing the social security system and the importance of adequate social security payments in preventing mental health difficulties among people living on low incomes. It explores the role of the social security system in both adult and child poverty, tracking the impact of recent welfare reforms and the support available to families during COVID-19 and afterwards.
This chapter explores in more depth the idea of poverty as a modifiable risk factor for poor mental health with the potential for improvement via a well-functioning social security system. It examines the concept of fairness in relation to welfare systems and the social contract. The chapter revisits the health selection and social causation pathways and the role of the social security system. It sets out a series of suggestions for changes to the system as it currently functions, focusing in particular on the areas of prevention and support. It explores the potential for improving payment adequacy, as well as making changes to the design of benefits such as Universal Credit to better improve mental health.
Our knowledge and awareness of mental health has never been greater, but little progress has been made in addressing a key cause of poor mental health: poverty and financial insecurity.
This book argues that tackling poverty and financial insecurity through well-designed social security systems could offer a new focus for improving our collective mental health.
Focusing on three key areas: prevention, support and investment, it sets out how social security could act as a public mental health intervention with the potential to help stop our current crisis trajectory of worsening poverty and mental health.
This chapter introduces the reader to key concepts in relation to income and mental health, and the role of the social security system, setting out the underpinning arguments that form the foundation of the book. It discusses the role of socioeconomic circumstances as a risk factor for mental ill health and explores the current trajectory of worsening population mental health. The chapter additionally sets out the background context to the research that underpins the book and discusses different methodologies used to generate the research findings in subsequent chapters, including statistical evidence and qualitative research, reflecting on the author perspective. The text ends by setting out the content in subsequent chapters.
This chapter discusses the role of the social security system in supporting families with children. It sets out the changes needed to current policies and processes in order to have a preventative impact on child poverty and the harmful effects of living on a low income. The chapter foregrounds recommendations for changes that have been developed in partnership with parents and carers living on low incomes. The recommendations cover broader increases in adequacy, alongside specific support for the costs associated with children, for example, school meals and activities. The chapter makes the case for viewing social security as an investment in the future, supporting children in the present to promote improved population mental health and well-being in the future.
Chapter 1 sets out the key theoretical basis for subsequent chapters, focusing in greater depth on the relationship between income and mental health. It discusses both the social causation and health selection pathways as explanations for the continuing close links between poverty and mental health problems, setting out key evidence. The chapter discusses key health-related income benefits for readers unfamiliar with the social security system, alongside the evolution of the benefits system over time. It discusses the influence of the wider economic context, beginning with the 2007 recession, then exploring the impact of austerity policies and welfare reforms on people living on low incomes. The chapter brings the discussion up to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This chapter brings together the policy changes discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, and seeks to set out the underlying principles to develop a fairer welfare state that has population mental health as a central priority. The aim is that the principles can be implemented across different social security systems and within different policy contexts. Recommendations include broadening expertise in policy making by including people with lived experience in the process, the use of trauma-focused approaches and considering alternative approaches to the development of both social security systems and mental health support, including putting mental health at the centre of all policies, particularly those associated with the welfare state. To do this, the chapter explores different models of mental healthcare and social security.
Chapter 4 discusses the role of intersectional forms of stigma in relation to mental health problems, poverty and social security. It sets out evidence from people with lived experience of mental health problems during the benefits claims process, discussing how the harmful rhetoric surrounding benefit claimants that has accompanied welfare reforms has been particularly detrimental for people with mental health problems, whose difficulties have been caught up in narratives of benefit fraud and deservingness. The chapter discusses that mental health is not always viewed as a valid reason to be out of work, and the ways in which different forms of stigma impact on people with mental health problems. It argues that the stigma associated with mental health problems is now being reimagined in different forms through the benefits system.
Chapter 3 explores the health selection pathway in relation to income and mental health, discussing the role of the social security system in supporting people with existing mental health problems. The chapter contextualises the current support available through the social security system by outlining the historical and social context of the development of deinstitutionalised mental healthcare systems and the social security system has developed in parallel, and sometimes at odds, with mental health support systems. Using statistical evidence and interviews with people experiencing mental health problems and accessing the benefits system, the chapter explores experiences of functional assessments and the social security claims process.