Based on recent data gathered from employees and managers, Work
and the Mental Health Crisis in Britain challenges the cultural
maxim that work benefits people with mental health difficulties,
and illustrates how particular cultures and perceptions can
contribute to a crisis of mental well-being at work.
* Based on totally new data gathered from employees and managers
in the UK
* Presents a challenge to much of the conventional wisdom
surrounding work and mental health
* Questions the fundamental and largely accepted cultural maxim
that work is unquestionably good for people with mental health
difficulties
* Illustrates how particular cultures of work or perceptions of
the experience of work contribute to a crisis of mental well-being
at work
* Fills a need for an up-to-date, detailed work that explores the
ways that mental health and work experiences are constructed,
negotiated, constrained and at times, marginalised
* Written in a style that is detailed and informative for
academics and professionals who work in the mental health sphere,
but also accessible to interested lay readers
Autorentext
Carl Walker is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Brighton. His research and teaching interests include social inequality and mental distress, cultural representations of mental health, and critical community approaches to psychology. He is course leader for the MA in Community Psychology and is currently engaged in work around employment, personal debt and mental distress. His previous publications include Depression and Globalisation (2007).
Ben Fincham is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sussex. He has been involved with developing projects on 'mobilities' and qualitative approaches to studying work in unstable employment environments, and his current research focuses on the complex relationship between work and mental health. He is co-author of Mobile Methodologies (2010).
Klappentext
There is longstanding interest in the relationship between mental health and work. Based on new data, this book challenges much of the conventional wisdom in this area. It suggests that the impact of neoliberal social and economic activity in the UK over recent years has meant the return of potentially debilitating forms of subjugation and exploitation. More people now struggle for fewer jobs of increasing intensity, reduced legal protection and lower real wages.
In addition, recent years have witnessed the implementation of unenforceable health and safety management standards and recommendations to guide workplace organisation. A key consequence of this approach has been the implementation of cultures of mental health replete with practices of discipline, control and identity configuration, with greater emphasis on productivity at the cost of mental wellbeing. This book outlines the way in which the lived experiences of mental health often fail to accord with modern industrial and corporate visions of acceptable personhood. In doing so, it questions the fundamental and largely accepted cultural maxim that work is unquestionably good for people with mental health difficulties.
Zusammenfassung
Based on recent data gathered from employees and managers, Work and the Mental Health Crisis in Britain challenges the cultural maxim that work benefits people with mental health difficulties, and illustrates how particular cultures and perceptions can contribute to a crisis of mental well-being at work.
- Based on totally new data gathered from employees and managers in the UK
- Presents a challenge to much of the conventional wisdom surrounding work and mental health
- Questions the fundamental and largely accepted cultural maxim that work is unquestionably good for people with mental health difficulties
- Illustrates how particular cultures of work or perceptions of the experience of work contribute to a crisis of mental well-being at work
- Fills a need for an up-to-date, detailed work that explores the ways that mental health and work experiences are constructed, negotiated, constrained and at times, marginalised
- Written in a style that is detailed and informative for academics and professionals who work in the mental health sphere, but also accessible to interested lay readers
Inhalt
About the Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
Chapter 1 Introduction: Mental Health, Emotional
Well-Being and 21st Century Work 1
Chapter 2 Getting Britain Back to Work: A Policy Perspective 11
Chapter 3 Mental Health and Work-Experiences of Work
Ben Fincham, Carl Walker with Holly Easlick 39
Chapter 4 Techniques of Identity Governance and Resistance:
Formulating the Neoliberal Worker
Carl Walker, Ben Fincham with Josh Cameron 67
Chapter 5 Managing Mental Health in Organizations 97
Chapter 6 Work/Life Balance and the Individualized
Responsibility of the Neoliberal Worker 133
Chapter 7 Concluding Thoughts: Neoliberalism and the Shrine of Work 147
References 163
Index 179