{"id":2009,"date":"2017-02-27T12:49:58","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T12:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/?page_id=2009"},"modified":"2017-02-27T12:51:48","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T12:51:48","slug":"transcript-of-podcast-does-poverty-harm-your-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/transcript-of-podcast-does-poverty-harm-your-mental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Transcript of podcast: Does poverty harm your mental health?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Podcast \u2013\u00a0<\/u>Does Poverty harm your mental health?<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

The audio for this podcast can be found here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hello and welcome to discussions in Tunbridge wells, the podcast produced by the Salomons Centre for Applied Psychology in Kent. My name is John McGowan and I\u2019m joined by our regular panel of Anne Cooke, Angela Gilchrist and Rachel Terry.<\/strong><\/p>\n

First of all Anne, where are we recording from today?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well we\u2019re sitting in our rather nice offices in a lovely manor house outside Tunbridge Wells in the countryside; looking out the window I can see a blackbird and some rabbits. We\u2019re not going to be here very long because we\u2019re very excited to be moving into the centre of Tunbridge wells, so we\u2019ll be hitting the town in our lunch breaks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. We\u2019ll spend our entire time going out for coffee and lunch, is it palatial? I don\u2019t know, we seem to have reached the less palatial end of the building.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ok, today\u2019s episode is titled \u2018Does Poverty harm your mental health?\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now the effects of poverty, austerity, and inequality have been discussed quite a bit over the past few years in all sorts of ways. We\u2019ve been in a climate of austerity and public sector savings on the back of a recession. The discussion today is prompted by two things though. First there\u2019s some recent coverage of a forthcoming book from the London school of economics group involving Lord Layard and titled \u2018The origins of Happiness\u2019. It is\u00a0quite a long term research agenda for Lord Layard who\u2019s\u2019 been involved with many such initiatives. This book (of which we\u2019ve seen an early advance copy), offers analysis as to the reasons some people are happier than others. One of the ways it\u2019s\u00a0 made an impression in our corner of the firmament (which is specifically around mental health), is suggesting that poverty, while it plays a role in happiness, is perhaps much less important than many people think. This has raised a few eye brows, including a letter in yesterday\u2019s Guardian. A letter in the Independent as well suggests that mental health problems are a very significant reason for unhappiness by themselves so you may be unhappy because you are mentally unwell or have a mental health problem.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now this stands in contrast to a number of other views and in particular another fairly recent report that we have wanted to discuss for some time from the Joseph Roundtree foundation. This one is authored by Iris Elliot, and offers what maybe a less surprising conclusion that poverty and inequality are very significant in the development of mental health problems.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So we are going to try and tease apart some of the claims and some of the measures and some of the implications of some of these different reports. Over to the panel now; Angela, could you give us a little bit of background of what is going on with these contrary claims, but could you initially just orientate us to this report from the LSE group?\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Gilchrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes I will try.\u00a0 What I\u2019d first like to say about the LSE report is that it\u2019s looking at wellbeing as a whole. I wouldn\u2019t want to convey that it\u2019s an unsophisticated report, because I don\u2019t think that is true, but it is worrying from the point of view of mental health but we\u2019ll get into that as we discuss. It takes the concept of happiness in a single measure of life satisfaction for adults and emotional wellbeing for children. That is a very interesting way of looking at things and this report does give us lots of interesting information about the things that impinge on our wellbeing. Its big problem though is that it separates out the factors that may well impinge on our mental health. But it does suggest that mental health is the biggest single predictor of happiness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel Terry<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think we need to be a bit careful using this term \u2018happiness\u2019 because it\u2019s life satisfaction that the authors were looking at, not happiness, as this is very individual and hard to define.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Gilchrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes I think happiness itself is a very subjective kind of measure isn\u2019t it? What constitutes happiness is going to be very different for different individuals. I do think this report teases out some of the things that tend to make people happy overall, so that\u2019s useful.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, I think it\u2019s useful from a number of points of view, I think it\u2019s really helpful to focus the attention of politicians because this is going to be politically important report to focus politicians\u2019 attention on wellbeing and not just economic growth, which is what people traditionally talk about so this really welcome. The focus on mental health is welcome as this is traditionally thought of as a Cinderella topic. Politicians don\u2019t think about it nearly enough, mental health services only have about 5% of the NHS spend on them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Rachel Terry<\/strong><\/p>\n

This report is really clear on emphasising that isn\u2019t it? There should be much more money spent on mental health services.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes absolutely, that is really welcome, as is the public health angle they take, thinking about prevention, thinking about getting into schools and childhood wellbeing, taking away the soul focus on results. As the mother of two children it is a really welcome development. But there are some problems with it; I think you indicated some of those. One of them is things are a bit different if you\u2019re poor. They talk about the fact that overall income is not correlated with happiness or their measure of satisfaction, as you say, but I think that\u2019s very different if you\u2019re very poor and it did seem that they hadn\u2019t really looked at the implications for the very poorest people in society. There\u2019s a danger of writing those people off in some sense, almost like animals sacrificing the vulnerable individuals for the good of the heard, I think there are big ethical issues about that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hmm, does money not make you happier though? They seem to claim it doesn\u2019t. I\u2019ve been living in hope that if I had a bit more money and a new Maserati approaching my 50th<\/sup> Birthday I\u2019d be a significantly happier individual, slightly crushing to be told no.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel Terry<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think that the way this report has been written up has done it a disservice. Reading it myself, going back to the original report, I didn\u2019t take the message that poverty doesn\u2019t impact on life satisfaction or happiness. In fact there were quite a few direct quotes that I\u2019ve taken from the report which go against that so for example, things like; \u201can ethos of mutual care is crucial for a happy society and such an ethos would be highly collated with greater equality of income, people are not happy when there is distressed social dislocation, oppression, inequality.\u201d So for me there were things within the report which did highlight the problems with poverty and inequality it\u2019s just that it wasn\u2019t given a main emphasis. I mean I think it goes without saying that poverty and distress are connected. The report also did say that one of the down sides is that the data that they\u2019ve got is very\u00a0 individual focussed and the way that they have been able to analyse the data is very much looking at factors in isolation, rather than being able to look at the interrelationships between the factors. So, they do acknowledge that to some extent. Unfortunately that means the message about the relationship between poverty and mental health gets lost a little bit.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Gilchrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think that is a significant flaw of this report, that the interrelationships between factors are not studied. So I think the limitations of the research methods on the findings need to be made clear to the public. I would worry about this being an influential document as far as mental health is concerned. Some of our listeners may know that Lord Layard\u2019s recommendations lay behind the formation of the IAPT programme (Improving access to psychological therapy) which of course has been a wonderful thing in many respects. \u00a0But they\u2019ve also been highly criticised for their emphasis on trying to get people back to work rather than looking at mental wellbeing as an aim in itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel Terry<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think there are areas to critique this report like you say, but there are also massively positive messages, like what Anne was saying at the beginning. I think that if we are discrediting this whole report that would be a real shame because overall it does a lot for arguing for much more consideration of wellbeing, that we should be enhancing life satisfaction and putting more money into mental health services. So I think if we\u2019re just giving a negative message about the report that is a massive shame when it could be used for our benefit.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Gilchrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would agree, as I said at the beginning I think there is a great deal in this report\u00a0 that\u2019s of value, but we need to be careful how the information in it is used and reported.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel Terry<\/strong><\/p>\n

Definitely.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n

I agree and I started by saying what I really like about it, but to me it has one fatal flaw, it did seem there was bit of a misunderstanding of the nature of mental illness, in the sense that there are statements like,\u00a0 \u2018The biggest cause of misery is mental illness\u2019. Well mental illness doesn\u2019t arise in a vacuum and also mental illness, is a name for a particular human emotion and it\u2019s not something special that only experts can diagnose and you have to have a technical treatment for. Mental illness is a name that we use to talk about when our emotions get so strong that they threaten to become overwhelming. It\u2019s not a different thing. So in a way that could be seen as quite illogical, we\u2019re saying that severe misery causes severe misery, and I think there\u2019s a real danger there. That misapprehension is actually shared by a lot of people in society; as psychologists it does make us very uncomfortable to think that a rather simplistic assumption might be driving a whole policy. And of course that could be a very welcome message for this idea that mental illness is something going wrong in people\u2019s brains that needs a technical fix. That could be a quite welcome message for our current government, because if it\u2019s nothing to do with the events and circumstances of people\u2019s lives but just to do with their brains, then it gets them off the hook, both in terms of what might have led to that misery and depression or anxiety and also in terms of changing society such that things improve, because it\u2019s all down to individual therapy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just to pick up a couple of practical things before just diving into that Anne, to say that going back to what you said Rachel there was some coverage that may have pushed the message that poverty doesn\u2019t matter, you know a little bit or suggesting that the LSE group is claiming that poverty doesn\u2019t matter. We\u2019ll link to a piece in the Guardian on our blog site. The report itself in the form of a book isn\u2019t out yet, but we are very grateful to the LSE for sending us an advanced PDF copy to discuss. We only got that yesterday so we\u2019ve all had the chance to at least look at it. We will also provide a link on the blog site to somewhere where you can ask for a copy of it because they do seem to be making some PDF copies available. There is a webpage for some talks they were giving about it; the main contributors were giving a talk about it the other day. Within the initial coverage most of the reaction has been based on this initial coverage and we\u2019ve read a letter to the papers, a group that we have some connection with Psychologists against Austerity, they\u2019ve already written something that\u2019s been a bit critical about it. I think what they are picking up on Anne is what you\u2019re saying about this notion of mental illness or mental ill-health can lead to unhappiness. The actual detail about how mental ill health arrives itself. There is come coverage but it\u2019s quite, seems on me anyway on a first read quite small. Feels like it just kind of exists there in some way.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Gilchrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

It exists apart from life circumstances which I think is the fatal flaw.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes because mental health problems arrive in the context of the events and circumstances of our lives, and I haven\u2019t seen that so far in what I\u2019ve read, and I think that\u2019s a very central thing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

In some ways this is, in terms of Lord Layard\u2019s own pretty extensive contribution to public policy, I think this is probably reflective of a stance that has lasted a number of years really, clearly decades actually, in the sense there are unaddressed mental health problems in society and that there are means and methods which we underinvest in but which can make a difference to those, so we have the improving access to psychological therapies initiative. Again that caught some criticism too, because it was seen as being in some quarters as, I have to say I was not uncritical of it myself at points. You are treating the mental health problem rather than what might underline rates of mental health problems, you\u2019re looking at the individual rather than others factors. So what\u2019s the evidence to the contrary because the other report that we have in front of us, the Joseph Roundtree Foundation report, it starts off absolutely clear, poverty increases the risk of mental health problems. That\u2019s the first line.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, I think there\u2019s good evidence of that, there\u2019s also good evidence that if you look more openly inequality is really important not necessarily only absolute poverty, but the rates of inequality in a society pretty much tracks the rates, or the other way round the rates of mental health problems pretty much track the levels of inequality, so I think that\u2019s quite clear. My other worry about putting all our eggs in the basket of individual therapy, it\u2019s just the scale of stuff that would be needed and there\u2019s never ever going to be enough therapists to go around to meet the need. It\u2019s a bit like trying to mop the floor while leaving the tap running, there\u2019s just not going to be enough, not to say that we shouldn\u2019t try it, I mean we\u2019re all therapists, we are all wanting to help people provide therapy, but I do worry about this idea that that\u2019s the answer to the problem of mental health.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel Terry<\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t get that take home message when I read the LSE report, I had the take home message that actually what we need to do is change our policy making decisions away from money and austerity and instead focus on increasing people\u2019s life satisfaction so we should be focusing on making people have more fulfilling positive lives in general, broadly we should be taking a health promotion perspective in all our policy making decisions, rather than putting everything into therapy or whatever. So I personally thought the take home message from the LSE report was very different from perhaps how the others in this group have taken it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Gilchrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

No Rachel I agree with you, and I do think that on the whole that it sends out a very good and positive message and I think its laudable as well that\u2019s position is to take it out of the arena of just looking at GDP and looking more broadly at the factors that impinge on life satisfaction. But as I say I do think its treatment of the mental health situation is worrying. That I suspect is because there aren\u2019t any psychologists involved in this project.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Anne Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, I wasn\u2019t going to say that!! Hahahaha<\/strong><\/p>\n

John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

OOOOOOOhhhhh<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Gilchrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019m sorry, nobody has thought about the psychology of this, it\u2019s about the economics or sort of broader, like you know, its mentioning work and all of the things, and relationships and all the things that impinge on our happiness but the problem as we\u2019ve already stated is that mental health problems are seen as something that exists separately from our circumstances so they are just diseases that can be targeted through therapy and we needn\u2019t worry about changing the bigger matrix that it gives rise to.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wonder if one of the issues is in terms of an outcome measure, I\u2019m not 100% sure of what to make of the life satisfaction outcome measure, in some ways there\u2019s an appealing simplicity to it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you want to say what it is?<\/strong><\/p>\n

John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ummm, what\u2019s the phrase exactly? It\u2019s asking people about the degree they are satisfied with their lives, and in some ways there\u2019s an appealing simplicity to that. Part of me thinks \u2018God it\u2019s got to be more complicated than that hasn\u2019t it?\u2019 But also it\u2019s something separate from mental health outcomes. It isn\u2019t the same thing so they can say, empirical work, they do talk about, is it Wilkinson and Picket the spirit level? They do talk a little bit about that, they looked at it very briefly in the context of inequality specifically; they do say. But empirical work on the effects of inequality on life satisfaction has yielded very mixed results; many studies have failed to find any effect so they clearly are dubious about the effects of inequality on life satisfaction. I\u2019m guessing other people might meet that evidence base, even in terms of life satisfaction somewhat differently. We are also talking about something else, we\u2019re also talking about psychiatric morbidity rates of mental health problems, which I think we\u2019re suggesting. And this other report from the Joseph Roundtree Foundation actually gives a very thorough analysis of the ways in which poverty and inequality are quite profoundly related to mental health outcomes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the empirical angle that Angela was alluding to. The psychological theoretical angle as well because psychology has a lot to say about the possible mechanisms by which the very very poor in society could lead to both a lack of wellbeing and also mental health problems. I would argue that those two are two sides of the same coin, the report seemed to be seeing them as different and one of the things I\u2019d possibly challenge. But anyway in terms of psychological methods there\u2019s lots of things like what we know about scarcity, when something is in very scarce supply that\u2019s what preoccupies us, when we haven\u2019t got enough to eat we think about food all the time, those kind of things. There\u2019s stuff about agency and how we\u2019re not able to affect our surroundings that has a very detrimental effect.\u00a0 So there\u2019s a whole load of psychological theories as well I think, that we have to look at, not just empirical data.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m just trying to think how the issues of poverty kind of shake out in terms of people\u2019s understanding of mental health issues, because at the moment, we have discussed this many times, and written about it many times as well. We\u2019re currently being, I think, in several quarters being given some quite strong messages about mental health and about mental health as something that can happen to anybody. It can absolutely happen to anybody. And in some ways I can see the rationale of that, you know, having a mental health problem you don\u2019t have to fit a stereotype, or stereotype of somebody perhaps you know, not able to deal with the stresses of real life, so it can happen to anyone. In some ways that\u2019s a laudable message but it also seems to risk being in ways a distorting message, perhaps, because these things may be more likely to happen to you if you\u2019re poor. Along with many other health issues.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Gilchrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

That is true, it\u2019s undoubtedly true, but we can\u2019t minimise the suffering of people who\u2019ve got enough economically, but they are still overcome with depression or anxiety or can\u2019t function well in the world. I\u2019ve had the privilege of working with some of the richest people in the world and some of the poorest. I\u2019ve worked in private hospitals in very wealthy areas and I\u2019ve worked with people in squatter camps in Africa. So I\u2019ve really seen both ends the spectrum.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

We do have something of a mixed message here and it\u2019s hard not to look inside people\u2019s heads. For example I was giving a talk at the LSE before the election in 2015 and we were talking about metal health problems. Paul Farmer was there from MIND and was I think partly taking this line about trying to de stigmatise things in the sense that they can happen to anybody. I was trying to make some points about poverty and inequality and after that I remember hearing in the news coverage coming up to the election. I was driving home one night and there was a story about increased suicide rates, especially amongst middle aged men, and there was a story about underinvestment in mental health. By the next night those stories were together and in some sense suicide was something that happened to individuals who felt suicidal and the answer was more mental health services. I suppose that\u2019s what gets me into implications. You know, what are the implications of this because on one hand we\u2019ve got (and we\u2019ll link to this on our site) pretty thorough growing analysis of the role of poverty and inequality in mental health problems and on the other hand we have an interesting report but one that seems to place mental health problems in a slightly more separate place with services as the answer. So what are the implications of this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel Terry<\/strong><\/p>\n

For me the implications are that it needs to be a multi-pronged approach. So there needs to be massively increased spending on mental health services, there needs to be a shift away in policy thinking from financial considerations solely onto consideration of health promotion broadly, mental health promotion and people\u2019s wellbeing and happiness and there needs to be a massive tackling of inequality within society and poverty. So I think it needs to be multi factored and it\u2019s not simple.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Gilchrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not at all no. I\u2019d agree with Rachel, it needs a multi-pronged approach and we need to get away from the idea that therapy can solve everything. It\u2019s certainly a very very useful tool, of course it is, but it can\u2019t solve the bigger problems that have given rise to these inequalities that have in turn impacted on people\u2019s mental health. We need to be thinking more broadly in terms of public health approaches. In terms of community approaches, in terms of prevention in schools, and you know, we need to hopefully get to the point where we\u2019re all thinking about mental health as something that each one of us has to maintain in the same way as we have to maintain our physical health. It\u2019s almost as if mental health only gets thought about when it\u2019s really gone wrong. We don\u2019t\u2019 encourage people to think about how to maintain it in the same ways as we help people to maintain their physical health through diet and exercise and all the other things. We just simply label and stigmatise those unfortunate enough to have mental health problems. Put it out there as something that can\u2019t possibly affect us, or so most people seem to think. There are shades of that in this report; I\u2019m not saying anybody deliberately intended to be discriminatory but the idea that mental health is just out there. Anxiety and depression are just things that occur to people, and people who are very different from the \u2018norm\u2019 as it were. They need treating, everybody else is alright.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, that\u2019s what I was going to say. Possibly not a huge amount is going to change as long as we have this idea of mental illnesses as thing that just strike people out of the blue. And your emphasis on mental health and degrees of mental health or lack of it, which actually maps quite well onto the concept of wellbeing here. But the report sees them as different; they\u2019re saying the lack of wellbeing is caused by mental illness, where as I would see it much more as, we need to think in terms of mental health as something akin to wellbeing that we have shades of, like you were saying. As long as we think of mental illness as this kind of random scary thing that inflicts certain people, not the rest of us, then we won\u2019t talk about it in schools, for example. I did some research with a trainee a couple of years ago, interviewing teachers about how they talked about mental health in the classroom, and we found that they didn\u2019t. They completely avoided the subject because they were scared of it. They didn\u2019t think they had enough expertise. They were worried that the parents would criticise them for talking to the children about these weirdos. It\u2019s very very sad, and I know I would say this as it\u2019s a thing I go on about, but as long as we have this idea of mental illness as separate from the normal run of human experience, we will think of it as something that is only addressable by technical treatment and not by changing the events and circumstances of people\u2019s lives that give rise to lack of mental health.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two points occur to me just in what you\u2019re saying. One is just to go back to my example of suicide rates, and I do think that\u2019s potentially quite an instructive one. There are a lot of different ways of seeing suicide rates, not just that the under investment in mental health services is the cause and greater investment is the solution. It\u2019s not like mental health services necessarily do such a bang up job with suicidal feelings anyway, particularly there\u2019s lots of reasons why they may not and taking away people\u2019s responsibility for themselves isn\u2019t always the most helpful thing. But there\u2019s a lot of different ways of seeing that. You can see it as part of a\u00a0 recession; you can see it as being about unemployment, skill shortages, a changing role of men, social epidemics that occur in ways that in which we are still catching up with via the internet, transfer of social and cultural information via that. There\u2019s a lot of different ways of seeing it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I suppose the other thing that was part of what you were saying Rachel about not seeing it in terms of economics. There\u2019s a quote from somebody that I never met, I heard them say it, I never saw who they were but I stayed with me for the last 10 years. One of my colleagues at work was showing somebody round the previous building that we were in down the drive and I remember this person saying to Fergal, he said \u2018I prefer investments to cuts\u2019, I thought don\u2019t we all, hahahaha. It\u2019s so easy to say and in one way to do think that this LSE group are trying to meet that head on, one way, they are actually trying. There is a case we are looking at, they\u2019re trying to look at what might save money, be cheaper, you know, actually use what is a finite pool of resources. I do think we deserve some credit for that. I do question a little bit in terms of mental health where they end up, and I also hope that the Joseph Roundtree foundation report, which we haven\u2019t talked about so much possibly because it\u2019s not so controversial or something. I do hope that people will take a chance to have look at that because it does offer some really interesting and thorough breakdown of the elements as to how the notion of inequality and poverty might really flow into mental health problems. It really brought that alive for me.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Gilchrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the most important point in the Joseph Roundtree report for me was that poverty could be both a cause and a consequence of mental ill health. It is looking at what comes from where. We\u2019re not really seeing that in the LSE report, although I\u2019d say again there\u2019s lots in the LSE report that is really laudable and I hope that people act upon. The idea for example that we as individuals, tend to be most unhappy when we are at work but actually happier than if we don\u2019t have work. And it says in the report that there are some implications there for modern management. Why are we unhappy at work? Although we\u2019re happier than we would be if we were unemployed obviously, but most of us spend a 3rd<\/sup> of our lives at work and those are hours that most of us seem to regret spending if we\u2019re to believe this report.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

It also beats the drum for working mothers of which we have two at this, I mean the phrase working mother seems like something out of my childhood in the 70\u2019s when that was disapproved of.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have a working father as well!<\/strong><\/p>\n

John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well yes, you know nobody has ever accused me of damaging my children\u2019s mental health, it says something positive about that and there\u2019s lots of positives to take.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela Gilchrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think 60% of mothers now return to work in the first year of the child\u2019s life, I mean that\u2019s astonishing really, compared to how it used to be. This also is showing that mother\u2019s mental health has a profound effect on the emotional wellbeing of children. (Emotional wellbeing being the measure that the LSE report has used in children\u2019s wellbeing).<\/strong><\/p>\n

John McGowan<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s shocking when you think how utterly overwhelming your first child can be, what a mess we might make of that. But anyway, I think we\u2019ll have to wind it up there. We\u2019ve left links to various things that we\u2019ve talked about on our website; we\u2019re currently recording this on Friday, hoping to have the podcast up by Sunday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just a few final things to say, which is that the best way to follow the podcast is to subscribe, you can do that on iTunes, our iTunes listing, it will be nice to have a few more there, you can actually write a review on iTunes as well. Although perhaps only if you have something nice to say! Also you can find articles touching on a number of these issues on our blog \u2018Discursive of Tunbridge Wells\u2019 and we will leave a link to that in the show notes. You can follow us on Twitter at CCCUappsy and on Facebook if you look for Canterbury Christ Church University Applied Psychology. We\u2019ll be back soon and thanks for listening.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Podcast \u2013\u00a0Does Poverty harm your mental health? The audio for this podcast can be found here. Hello and welcome to discussions in Tunbridge wells, the podcast produced by the Salomons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5457,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2009","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5457"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2009"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2017,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2009\/revisions\/2017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}