Welcome to The Big Ideas, a podcast series exploring how data shapes our understanding of health and inequalities and how to make the collection and use of data more inclusive to inspire a more equitable future. The podcast series is part of the Social and Economic Predictors of Severe Mental Disorders (SEP-MD) research project led by Dr Jayati Das-Munshi from King’s College London and affiliated with the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. In the final episode of the series, ‘Future possibilities of mental health data’, host Milena Wuerth, Research Assistant, King’s College London is joined by Principal Investigator on the project Dr Jayati Das-Munshi, Clinical Reader in Social & Psychiatric Epidemiology, King’s College London, and Robert Stewart, Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology & Clinical Informatics, King's College London. They explore how routine and linked data can be used to tackle and address mental health inequalities through informing policy, practical change and clinical interventions. They reflect on the future possibilities of linked health records data, to create health equity within systems. The Big Ideas was produced by Words of Colour: www.wordsofcolour.co.uk The Big Ideas is a special 4-part series of Our Sick Society. In this podcast, researchers from the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health and people with lived experience explore together how social factors contribute to mental health problems. The podcast encourages listeners to think and question society’s role in mental health - what are the systems and the structures which mean that some people are more likely to become mentally unwell than others?

Welcome to The Big Ideas, a podcast series exploring how data shapes our understanding of health and inequalities and how to make the collection and use of data more inclusive to inspire a more equitable future. The podcast series is part of the Social and Economic Predictors of Severe Mental Disorders (SEP-MD) research project led by Dr Jayati Das-Munshi from King’s College London and affiliated with the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. In this episode,‘Severe Mental Health Disorders: The initial findings’, host Milena Wuerth, Research Assistant, King’s College London is joined by Rosanna Hildersley, PhD student and Research Assistant on the SEPMD project and Dr. Lukasz Cybulski, Post Doctoral Researcher on the SEPMD project. They provide an overview of the SEP-MD research project and discuss why we would want to link mental health records to administrative data like Census from England. Rosie discusses her project, which explores the association of urban areas with the onset of severe mental health conditions like psychosis. Lucasz discusses his work which has used the linkage to shed light on social outcomes in psychosis. The Big Ideas was produced by Words of Colour: www.wordsofcolour.co.uk The Big Ideas is a special 4-part series of Our Sick Society, a podcast where researchers from the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health and people with lived experience explore together how social factors contribute to mental health problems. The podcast encourages listeners to think and question society’s role in mental health - what are the systems and the structures which mean that some people are more likely to become mentally unwell than others?

Welcome to The Big Ideas, a podcast series exploring how data shapes our understanding of health and inequalities and how to make the collection and use of data more inclusive to inspire a more equitable future. The podcast series is part of the Social and Economic Predictors of Severe Mental Disorders (SEP-MD) research project led by Dr Jayati Das-Munshi from King’s College London and affiliated with the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. In this episode, ‘Tackling systemic mental health inequalities’, host Milena Wuerth, Research Assistant, King’s College London is joined by Annette Davis who is a carer and Chair for PCREF Carer and Service User Group, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust to discuss ethnic inequalities that exist within mental health systems, and how this can be addressed through the patient and carer race equality framework (PCREF). Annette was involved in the service user and carer advisory group for SEP-MD. Annette reflects on how improved recording of ethnicity in health records is needed to improve mental health care provision. She also reflects on the challenges of tackling race equality in mental health care provision and the importance of involving service users and carers in this journey to tackle systems change. The Big Ideas was produced by Words of Colour: www.wordsofcolour.co.uk The Big Ideas is a special 4-part series of Our Sick Society, a podcast where researchers from the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health and people with lived experience explore together how social factors contribute to mental health problems. The podcast encourages listeners to think and question society’s role in mental health - what are the systems and the structures which mean that some people are more likely to become mentally unwell than others?

Welcome to The Big Ideas, a podcast series exploring how data shapes our understanding of mental health and inequalities and how to make the collection and use of data more inclusive to inspire a more equitable future. The podcast series is part of the Social and Economic Predictors of Severe Mental Disorders (SEP-MD) research project led by Dr Jayati Das-Munshi from King’s College London and affiliated with the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. In the launch episode, ‘Making the most of existing data’, host Milena Wuerth, Research Assistant, King’s College London is joined by Amelia Jewell, Research Informatics and Governance Lead for the Clinical Records Interactive Search (CRIS), South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, to discuss how data linkage can be like ‘patching the holes’; By linking mental health data with administrative datasets like census, the data starts to tell us about patterns of inequality in mental health. Amelia discusses some of the challenges of linking large-scale data and the importance of patient involvement in this so that data can be turned into a tool for change. The Big Ideas was produced by Words of Colour: www.wordsofcolour.co.uk The Big Ideas is a special 4-part series of Our Sick Society, a podcast where researchers from the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health and people with lived experience explore together how social factors contribute to mental health problems. The podcast encourages listeners to think and question society’s role in mental health - what are the systems and the structures which mean that some people are more likely to become mentally unwell than others?

Our Sick Society is taking a brief hiatus to explore ways to continue the series, and we would really like your help. Below is a link to a short feedback survey where you can tell what you liked, what you didn’t, and what topics you think we should cover in future episodes. You can also enter a prize draw to win one of two £50 Love 2 Shop vouchers. Enter here: https://bit.ly/OSS-Survey

In 2014 the UN Convention on the Rights of Person’s with Disabilities (UNCRPD) recommended that policymakers and psychiatrists should “review the laws allowing for guardianship and trusteeship, and take action to develop laws and policies to replace regimes of substitute decision-making by supported decision-making, which respects the person’s autonomy, will and preferences”. These stipulations mean the disbandment of involuntary and assisted care, which are two forms of care that are conventionally used to treat people with lost mental capacity. Involuntary care specifically refers to when someone is treated without their consent, towards the restoration of their autonomy and in the interest of their and others safety . The UNCRPD's stipulations, on the other hand, mean a shift in focus to provision that ensures relational and environmental supports for people with psychosocial conditions who are in crisis, instead of treatment against the person's will. The sentiments of GC1 have been met with caution and sometimes contention, and remain important to policy in UN signatories. To explore some of the complexities of this debate, Alex Freeman interviews Charlene Sunkel, and Prof. George Szmukler - both experts in the field and human rights activists with different experiences and insightful perspectives towards involuntary care and psychiatric provision. For more information about the Global Mental Health Peer Network, visit: https://www.gmhpn.org/ You can download the transcript for this episode here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/csmh/assets/oss-transcripts/oss-transcript-episode-15.pdf

As part of the Centre's 2022 Festival: Partnering for Change, Black Thrive explore the inequalities that Black people face in academia and knowledge production. Here, participants had the opportunity to reflect on knowledge production practices and their implications for Black Communities. Chaired by Lela Kogbara, Director of Black Thrive, our distinguished panel includes Jacqui Dyer (Director at Black Thrive), Natalie Creary (Programme Delivery Director at Black Thrive), Celestin Okoroji (Head of Research at Black Thrive) and Stephani Hatch (Professor of Sociology and Epidemiology at CSMH). This recording is Part 2 of 2 from a session on "System change through Black-led research", held as part of the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health 2022 Festival: Partnering for Change. Download the episode transcript: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/csmh/assets/oss-transcripts/our-sick-society-episode-14-systems-change-through-black-led-research-a-conversation-with-black-thrive-transcript.pdf Read the complementary blog here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/leading-with-integrity-supporting-black-led-research For more information about Black Thrive Lambeth, visit: https://lambeth.blackthrive.org/what-we-do/ For more information about Black Thrive Global, visit: https://blackthrive.org/ For more information about the Centre, visit: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/csmh

In this episode, Dr Charlotte Woodhead explores findings from the Tackling Inequalities and Discrimination Experiences study, or TIDES. Led by Professor Stephani Hatch at King's College London, TIDES aims to understand how discrimination, bullying and harassment is experienced in the health service and its effects on staff and patients. We hear from an expert panel, who discuss some of the findings about how the healthcare workplace environment not only creates but maintains racialised inequalities experienced by healthcare staff. The panel is chaired by Femi Otitoju, Chair of Challenge Consultancy. Panel members are Cerisse Gunasinghe, research associate and counselling psychologist, and member of the TIDES study team; Nathan Stanley, research assistant on the TIDES study; Isaac Akande, clinical psychologist based in the NHS. Joy Gana-Inatimi, programme lead for medical leadership at the Edgehill University Medical School and Safeguarding Lead; Naomi Clifford, research assistant for the Nottinghamshire Health Care NHS Foundation Trust and TIDES peer researcher; and Charlotte Woodhead, lecturer in society and mental health at the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health at King’s College London. For more information about TIDES, you can visit https://tidesstudy.com/ or follow @tides_study on Twitter. You can also find the latest research via the following links: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9566.13414 https://tidesstudy.com/we-need-to-talk-about-discrimination-bullying-and-harassment-at-work/

In the aftershock of the large-scale social movements in Hong Kong in 2019, over 100,000 Hong Kong migrants came to the UK since 2021. This episode, hosted by UCL Research Assistant Joseph Lam (@Jo_Lam_), sheds light on the lived experience of these migrants, asking what a Hong Konger identity means to them, and what communities can do to help them integrate. Zara Asif (@Zara_Asif) is a research assistant and PhD student at the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health at King’s College London. Zara led the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Directory for Refugees and Migrants in Greater London. Learn more about the MHPSS directory here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/mhpss-directory. Roy is a recent migrant in the UK from Hong Kong. Roy is a pseudonym; his voice has been altered to preserve anonymity. Hongkongers in Britain (HKB) is the first Hongkonger-led Civil Society Organisation established in July 2020, since UK's Introduction of the BN(O) Visa Scheme. HKB is an expat/diaspora & community-building group, with objectives to provide assistance, advice and support for, and consolidate the Hongkonger community in the UK, enabling them to settle, integrate, and contribute towards the UK society. Mark Liang and the Mental Health Team at HKB published the “Survey Report of Mental Health Amongst Hong Kong Arrivals in the UK” in May 2022. Mark is currently a medical student at UC Irvine. His research was conducted as part of an MPhil in Health, Medicine, and Society at the University of Cambridge. Visit HKB’s website to find out more about the Mental Health Survey Report: https://www.hongkongers.org.uk/mental-survey. HKB also has a mental health team under its UK-wide community project "Mission PERM", that provides emotion support and wellbeing advisory service, and hosts monthly psychoeducational events. You can follow HKB on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Telegram @HongkongersUK The BBC produced a short documentary on the experience of recent Hong Kong migrants in the UK. It captures similar topics that are discussed in this podcast episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQzY69IBKY8

The social conditions of war and conflict shape the landscape of mental health for those affected by violence, persecution, and displacement. The episode, hosted by Centre Research Assistant Milena Wuerth, considers how systems of funding and hierarchies of expertise shape how mental health is defined in humanitarian interventions. Our guests share personal, clinical, and academic insights that reveal the many layers within dominant concepts of ‘trauma’. Finally, they suggest ways to make research more equitable, sustainable and representative of lived experience for those enduring or fleeing violent conflict. Milena Wuerth joined King’s College London in January 2022 as a Research Assistant on the Together to Transform: A mutual learning platform to develop a social paradigm for global mental health. Milena holds a BA in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and is currently pursuing a MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Onwuzurike Ogan is a Master’s student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and works as a consultant psychiatrist for the Nigerian Ministry of Defence. Thurayya Zreik is a qualitative mental health researcher in mental health and has worked as a consultant for NGOs including the ICRC and War Child Holland and for Lebanon’s National Mental Health Program. Doerte Bemme is a lecturer in Society and Mental Health at King’s College London, and Tessa Roberts is a post-doctoral research fellow for the Centre for Society and Mental Health at King’s College London. They are joint Principal investigators of the Together to Transform project, a mutual learning platform to develop a social paradigm for global mental health. To learn more about the Together to Transform, please visit our website: www.together2transform.org For more information about the GOAL project and similar research, visit the website of LSHTM’s Centre for Global Chronic Conditions: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres/centre-global-chronic-conditions Follow the Centre on Twitter @LSHTM_CGCC Read more about how to implement co-production principles in academic research, authored by Thurayya’s colleauges at LSHTM: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354161201_Research_as_usual_in_humanitarian_settings_Equalising_power_in_academic-NGO_research_partnerships_through_co-production

To launch our brand new series, and to announce our 2022 Festival, we revisit our 2021 conference. BBC Radio 4 presenter Claudia Hammond chairs this special panel discussion to explore the future for society and mental health research and policy. Featuring Sir Norman Lamb, Hári Sewell, Akiko Hart, Catherine Roche. You can find out more about the conference here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/shifting-the-narrative-reflections-from-the-csmh-conference Between 21st- 23rd June, the Centre is hosting our 2022 Festival, exploring the theme Partnering for Change. How can communities come together to partner for change? Join us for a week of networking, discussion, workshops and creative expression! Details here: https://bit.ly/CSMH_Festival Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kcsamh Subscribe to our mailing list: https://bit.ly/CSMH_MailingList

Adna, Karima, and Thai-sha are back! Join them in this special limited series produced by the Resilience, Ethnicity, and AdolesCent mental Health (REACH) project’s Young Person’s Community Champions (YPCC). Recent research from the REACH study found that 1 in 5 pupils were experiencing difficulties with their mental health from February 2016 - January 2018: approximately 6 in a class of 30! This is much higher than what is estimated nationally. There have been so many further changes since then due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing, remote learning, changes to exams, economic impacts, and the fear of the unknown have all been challenging for young people. In this episode, the REACH YPCC are joined by secondary school teacher, Louise, where they delve into the impacts of the pandemic on student mental health but also the effects on the mental health of teachers. Join the team in discussions about improving support for young people and teachers post-COVID along with ways to encourage a better school environment for teachers and students to seek mental health support. If you need or know someone who needs support, please visit www.thereachstudy.com/resources.

Adna, Karima, and Thai-sha are back! Join them in this special limited series produced by the Resilience, Ethnicity, and AdolesCent mental Health (REACH) project’s Young Person’s Community Champions (YPCC). With Black people being 40% more likely to access treatment through a police or criminal justice route, and less likely overall to receive psychological therapies, communities are reporting growing distrust in our justice and healthcare systems. But what other factors are at play? We know that culture can influence a person's beliefs, norms, values and opinions, but does it also have significant impact on mental health and help-seeking? And how do community experiences of mistrust impact the wider culture? The REACH YPCC engage in the much-needed discussion of the links between culture, stigma and mental health. They are joined by Lucas and Jonas, two of our REACH Champions, and Nathaniel Martin who works at King’s College London and Black Thrive, reflecting on personal experiences of their own cultures and how this may have affected views surrounding mental health and help-seeking. If you need or know someone who needs support, please visit www.thereachstudy.com/resources.

Adna, Karima, and Thai-sha are back! Join them in this special limited series produced by the Resilience, Ethnicity, and AdolesCent mental Health (REACH) project’s Young Person’s Community Champions (YPCC). Studies have found a strong link between heavy social media use and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts. The REACH YPCC have shared that, during the pandemic and lockdown, social media use amongst themselves and their peers increased. As young people use social media regularly, the REACH YPCC felt it important to discuss these potential impacts as well the solutions to making social media platforms a safer environment for young people. Join the team for this interesting discussion held with Louisa Rose, Chief Executive Officer at Beyond and Professor Yvonne Kelly, Director of the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health. If you need or know someone who needs support, please visit www.thereachstudy.com/resources.

Adna, Karima, and Thai-sha are back! Join them in this special limited series produced by the Resilience, Ethnicity, and AdolesCent mental Health (REACH) project’s Young Person’s Community Champions (YPCC). Recent research produced by the REACH team found that approximately 1 in 8 boys aged 11-14 had self-harmed between 2016 - 2017. More recently, lockdown and the Covid-19 pandemic has had positive and negative impacts on young people’s mental health, but there has been little attention to the well-being of boys in particular. The REACH YPCC wanted to find out more! Join the team as they chat with Lucas and Jonas, two of our REACH Champions, who reflect on their experiences over lockdown, and how they have wrestled with stigma and challenges to conform with a socio-cultural definition of masculinity that often discourages boys and young men from seeking help. This episode discusses topics such as suicide and illness. Please use discretion. If you need or know someone who needs support, please visit www.thereachstudy.com/resources.

In this episode of Our Sick Society, we explore the intersection of digital exclusion and mental health through the eyes of activists, artists with lived experience, medical anthropologists, and computer scientists. Dörte Bemme (@DBemme) and River Ujhadbor (@River_Chaoss) guide us through 12 different perspectives that trace the edge of digital exclusion through policy, intervention, digital care, and our everyday lives and emotions. Activist Kate Scodellaro talks about how digital exclusion affects people with disabilities and amplifies other inequalities in the UK. Theatre artists River Ujhadbor, Chill Jill, Amala Joy, Oriana, and Kim Marsh bring to life what digital exclusion feels and sounds like in powerful soundscapes and spoken word poetry. The editors of the blog series “Tracking Digital Psy” (@somatosphere), Natassia Brenman (@NFBrenman) and Beth Semel (@bethmsemel), discuss with four scholars how digital exclusion is encoded in mental health service provision, in algorithms, and apps. Anthropologist Rebecca Lester (@psychanthro) reflects on exclusions emerging from digital mental health care in the US. Psychologist Manuel Capella (@capellamanu) talks about how telepsychiatry in Ecuador is a neoliberal form of care offered by a government unwilling to engage with social and structural issues Artist and computer scientist Jonathan Zong (@ohnobackspace) reflects on the digital binary as exclusive by design, and on how digital technologies can mean both care and control. Anthropologists Livia Garafolo (@livgar_) and Alexa Hagerty (@anthroptimist), advocate for designing digital technologies together with communities, and with their notions of digital inclusion in mind. We are grateful for the support from the Theatre Company Clean Break, ESRC UKRI Impact Fund, and the Impact Fund from the Department for Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. For more information about research discussed in this episode, click here: http://somatosphere.net/series/tracking-digital-psy/ Download the transcript here: https://bit.ly/OSS9_Transcript

In this special episode of Our Sick Society, three young participants of the REACH project are taking over! Join Adna, Karima and Thai-sha as they explore the impacts of social class and poverty on the mental health of young people. They meet with Professor Diane Reay and Dr Sophie Wickham to discuss recent research, and reflect on ways that social media has affected young people’s wellbeing, as well as changes they would like to see in the future. For more information about research discussed in this episode, click here: https://linktr.ee/OSS_Episode8

In this episode we are asking, what is society’s role in refugee and asylum-seeker mental health in the UK? What are the systems and the structures which affect their mental health, and their access to support? And importantly, how can we shift the narrative - to change the way we view and support refugees and asylum-seekers? We’ll be hearing from Abigail Oyedele, Zara Asif and Hanna Kienzler who are also from the Centre for Society & Mental Health, and from Vidhi Bassi and Catriona Scott who work with LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum-seekers at Metro Charity. For more information about mental health during the asylum process, you can watch Changing Policy and Practice to Promote Sanctuary Seeker Mental Health, a short video by Sohail, on the CSMH YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/OSS7_SJ

As Covid-19 social restrictions begin to ease, a return to face-to-face teaching is being prioritised by the government. With a spotlight focused on the well-being of our children, what about the teachers and their mental health? In this episode, Dr Gemma Knowles explores how teachers and non-teaching school staff have been impacted by the pandemic, whether their mental health has been affected, and what they think needs to happen to improve support as children return to school. We hear from Caroline, a teacher at a girls’ school in South East London; Gemma Watson, Founding CEO of The T.H.I.N.K. BIG Project and pastoral support lead for schools in London; Sarah Houghton, Head of Learning – Schools for Place2Be; Dr Lisa E. Kim, a researcher based at the University of York who is exploring teachers experiences of Covid-19; and school and college students, Adna, Niiokani, Thai-sha and Anna.

What is it about music that can tap so powerfully into our mental state? Dr Sally Marlow speaks to a samba band, an orchestra and a South East London band about how music has influenced the mental health of communities and musicians across the UK. Featured in this episode are: Jack Drum Arts, who create inclusive arts projects, activities and events for all ages and abilities - inspiring lives, improving mental health and promoting community cohesion; the City of London Sinfonia (CLS) who create meaningful, shared music experiences between its musicians and audiences, including individuals in wellbeing and healthcare settings and concert audiences in open-plan venues; and The Soothsayers, a London-based afrobeat and reggae-influenced band, who discuss the important role that music plans in their lives and the success of their creative music project The Youthsayers.