Workshop: Mental Health and Austerity, 2020

A Medical Humanities Workshop: Mental Health and Austerity, January 2020.

North-east England has been disproportionately affected by austerity measures, reporting high levels of deprivation and widening inequalities. This regional vulnerability to government cuts lies to a large degree in industrial history: the impact of deindustrialization, and the legacy of long-term unemployment and public sector employment. University researchers from oral history, social gerontology, health history and the cross-school Labour and Society Research Group have started conversations about the impact of austerity measures upon mental health in the region and beyond. This workshop provided a platform to bring these researchers together, demonstrating medical humanities’ capacity to focus multidisciplinary perspectives on pressing social issues, and explored avenues for collaborative research and new approaches.

Mental Health and Precarious Work

• David Lain, ‘Understanding older worker precarity in the context of austerity and extended working lives’
• Vicky Long, ‘It’s the Pits. Coal Mining and Mental Health over the Twentieth Century’

Welfare Provisions and Mental Health

• Matt Perry, ‘Universal Credit: Last Time Round’
• Suzanne Moffatt, ‘Mental health and welfare ‘reform’. Narratives from Newcastle and Gateshead’

Oral History Approaches to Mental Health and Austerity

• Graham Smith, ‘GPs and Mental Health in the 1980s and 1990s’ (provisional title)
• Alison Atkinson-Phillips: Foodbank Histories Soundscape

Organised and led by Dr Vicky Long. A collaboration between the Newcastle Medical Humanities Network and the Labour and Society Research Group.

Last modified: Fri, 01 Jul 2022 11:49:12 BST