Ashley Weinberg

• PhD
• Senior Lecturer at University of Salford

The Brexit general election in 2019 was widely regarded as a victory for populism in the UK, precipitating its departure from the European Union. For many years, Nigel Farage lobbied consistently for this aim, and was arguably the most well-known populist British politician. Founder member of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and its former leader,...

As an Occupational Psychologist researching mental health in politics, I had the opportunity to conduct research on the work challenges facing the staff of Members of Parliament. This article reflects on these and ongoing attempts to improve their working conditions via the Speaker's Conference of MPs. The full article can be accessed here: https:/...

This is an interview with Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, whose daughter Ella’s death in 2013 was the first to be attributed to air pollution. The interview can be accessed at: https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/when-breathing-clean-air-becomes-political

Relatively recently governments have begun to show some of the leadership required to incorporate well-being within their calculations about work-related behaviour. This is important not only for fulfilling our individual potential, but also in signalling recognition of the central role of well-being – both physical and psychological – within equat...

This chapter considers the role of all humans as politicians in a range of roles. This extends from occupational groups involved in formal ‘Politics’ to our everyday experiences. As citizens, contending with ‘politics’ in relationships, communities, and workplaces, our experiences of political and social spheres are key to our well-being and our f...

The pandemic led to a pause in routine breast screening in the UK, with up to one million not being offered appointments (Breast Cancer Now, Almost one million women in UK miss vital breast screening due to COVID-19, 2022). However, according to a Nuffield report, even before this, breast cancer screening in the UK had yet to reach its ‘optimal per...

Democracy was forged in the furnaces of oppression, whether combatting tyranny or affirming the rights of the individual. As democracy is under threat in many parts of the world, there has never been a more urgent need to understand political thoughts and behaviours. This book brings together a global group of scholars from psychology, political sc...

Aim: To explore employee experiences of nearing or working beyond state pensionable age, and the factors enabling and inhibit them to work for longer. Specifically, the study explored the health, social, workplace and financial barriers and facilitators to working for longer in a predominately female workforce. This chapter uses the socio-ecologica...

Democracy was forged in the furnaces of oppression, whether combatting tyranny or affirming the rights of the individual. As democracy is under threat in many parts of the world, there has never been a more urgent need to understand political thoughts and behaviours. This lucid and accessible book brings together a global group of scholars from psy...

Democracy was forged in the furnaces of oppression, whether combatting tyranny or affirming the rights of the individual. As democracy is under threat in many parts of the world, there has never been a more urgent need to understand political thoughts and behaviours. This lucid and accessible book brings together a global group of scholars from psy...

Democracy was forged in the furnaces of oppression, whether combatting tyranny or affirming the rights of the individual. As democracy is under threat in many parts of the world, there has never been a more urgent need to understand political thoughts and behaviours. This lucid and accessible book brings together a global group of scholars from psy...

Democracy was forged in the furnaces of oppression, whether combatting tyranny or affirming the rights of the individual. As democracy is under threat in many parts of the world, there has never been a more urgent need to understand political thoughts and behaviours. This lucid and accessible book brings together a global group of scholars from psy...

Democracy was forged in the furnaces of oppression, whether combatting tyranny or affirming the rights of the individual. As democracy is under threat in many parts of the world, there has never been a more urgent need to understand political thoughts and behaviours. This lucid and accessible book brings together a global group of scholars from psy...

Following events at the Capitol Building in January 2021, this article considers the impact of psychological stress on those working in politics

Review article of mental health experienced in times of economic and health crisis, with the UK post-Brexit as a case study example

Being an MP does not come with a formal job description, and the working realities of our elected politicians are complex. We know from current psychological evidence that work plays a central role in our identity and meaningful activity in life is key to wellbeing. This applies as much to politicians as it does to any other job. While other high-s...

Background/aims Emotional intelligence enables recognition, understanding and management of emotions of self and others, supporting development of communication, relationship building and engagement skills. The application of emotional intelligence supports technical and non-technical competence, facilitating confidence, leadership and capability i...

Many countries are reforming their pension systems so people stay in work for longer to improve the long-term sustainability of public finances to support an increasing older population. This research aimed to explore the factors that enable or inhibit people to extend working life (EWL) in a large United Kingdom-based retail organisation. Semi-str...

Despite the singular importance of the work of national politicians in creating legislation, representing constituents and holding government to account, relatively little work has been done concerning their wellbeing and psychological health. There are unique, as well as universal, stressors that impact upon politicians; a neglect of these issues...

Link to accepted version: http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/34594/1/11991_Hudson.pdf Background: Annual costs to organizations of poor mental health are estimated to be between £33 billion and £42 billion. The UK's National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has produced evidence-based guidance on improving employees' psychological health, d...

Chapter is a review of the impact of Neurodiversity on workplace performance and a review of the different adjustments in place to mediate difficulties. Occupational strengths are also discussed. Advice for individuals, employers and policy makers is summarised.

This article considers why mental health is important in our workplaces, including elected political positions on which the effective functioning of our democracy depends. It looks at the job of the politician and its particular challenges, and argues there is a need to ensure that working conditions for all occupations are positive, and why we nee...

Introduction: The psychosocial work environment has been implicated as an important factor in the psychological health of employees, yet organisational-level interventions addressing working conditions have provided inconsistent findings. Much of this has been attributed to complex contextual and process-related factors that can affect intervention...

This study evaluated the impact of counsellor training on emotional intelligence (EI) in 45 undergraduates and 58 postgraduates. Significant improvements were recorded by students on completion of both programmes, suggesting that these were attributable to training which enhanced intra- and interpersonal aspects of emotional functioning. As a group...

Abstract Objectives: The positive impact of coaching on a range of outcomes, including the well-being of those in receipt of it, has been highlighted by a number of published reviews (e.g. de Haan and Duckworth, 2013) and meta-analyses (e.g. Jones, Woods and Guillaume, 2015). The objective of this study was to assess the potential for coaching to...

The UK NHS Breast Screening Programme has set a national minimum rate for uptake of routine invitations at 70 % [1]. In 2012–2013, 2.32 million women aged 50–70 were invited to attend for a routine mammogram, 72.2 % of whom complied. This represented a further decrease from previous years in which uptake of routine invitations had fallen (73.4 % in...

Longitudinal cohorts drawn from a sample of 136 UK MPs responded to surveys assessing the impact of work-related changes over which they had either a higher or lower level of control—namely working hours reform and the expenses crisis, respectively. Their psychological health, experiences managing the interface between work and home and aspects of...

The Select Committee which reviewed the working hours of the House of Commons revealed that MPs were facing two major problems: first, they had not the time and/or resources to carry out their work as they would wish; and second, a disastrous price had been, and continued to be paid in terms of their private and family lives.1 Such problems serve t...

The Psychology of Politicians explores a topic which fuels public and media debate yet is under-researched and has potentially far-reaching consequences for the success of our political systems. Focusing on research with democratically elected representatives from the UK, Poland and Italy, and on the political behaviour of a former US President and...

The Fall Of Capitalism? Why Are These Times So Stressful? The Nature Of Stress In Turbulent Times What Do The Sources Of Pressure Mean To Us? Dealing With Stress In The Workplace: The Options For Organizations And Their Employees Coping With Turbulent Times: A Survival Kit For The Individual

Mismatched expectation is the enemy of happiness. Psychologically speaking, anything around which we anchor our existence can become such a core part of how we see the world that when it ceases to be, we experience loss and are left ‘wandering’. At a personal level the reaction of grief to loss is a natural one and can have far-reaching effects on...

In turbulent times, we all need a survival kit, and the organization is no different from the individual in this regard. Whereas some organizations previously felt that the psychological wellbeing of its staff was either a given or a luxury, the full weight of taking for granted this aspect of our working lives has already become apparent. Those em...

This chapter examines three aspects of life affected by turbulent times and the psychological challenges which can follow from each aspect: namely, work, home life and finance. During the usual course of things, we can expect to face difficulties in each of these areas, but a common consequence of widespread economic, political or environmental cha...

Coping is the process by which we deal with emotional and practical problems, and it demands of us a range of skills and no little degree of flexibility. If psychological strain is someone’s personal experience of these turbulent times and the individual’s resources to deal with it are limited, how well is that person coping? Actually, this can be...

‘I am living in a country which has seen its financial system reach meltdown; there have been mass protests on the streets by an angry public facing an uncertain future; there is widespread disenchantment with politicians and parts of the media and law enforcement; and regular allegations of corruption, cover-up or greed are leveled at organization...

Since gaining popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, the concept ‘stress’ has achieved the status of an overused term. It is readily identifiable as a state of being which is usually less than desirable and describes our state of physical and psychological arousal when pressures bear down on both our daily existence and our sense of well-being. In the...

The Psychology of Politicians explores a topic which fuels public and media debate yet is under-researched and has potentially far-reaching consequences for the success of our political systems. Focusing on research with democratically elected representatives from the UK, Poland and Italy, and on the political behaviour of a former US President and...

Including practical advice on how to conduct a stress audit and how to target stress 'hot spots' within an organization, Organizational Stress Management provides a fresh strategic model for the manager concerned with the negative effects stress can have both on company performance and the quality of life of individuals at work. © Ashley Weinberg,...

To successfully manage a stress situation, we must first define what we mean by “stress” and identify what causes it in order to recognize the effects of exposure to stress. We have already examined the deleterious costs of mismanaged stress in Chapter 1, and acknowledged the implications of the stress litigation process and the consequences of inc...

Many of us would subscribe to the adage, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it”, but we are also aware that if “it” is our workplace, then things are constantly changing. Where jobs depend on success in our area of work – and most tend to – there are nagging doubts and fears that “it” might not be good enough to help us maximize our potential and to en...

The interactive model of stress described in Chapter 3 specifies that we need to identify, measure and understand three separate issues:

We have now considered all the necessary issues in respect of the first two “A”s in our “Triple A” approach to the management of stress: AWARENESS and ANALYSIS. To achieve this, we have examined the stress process, explained its origins, given definitions of stress, and provided a model of stress to guide the process of analysis. In order to comple...

Rapid technological development in the work environment has exposed more of us to the need to work “with” and “for” computers at work. “Computer phobics” are still found in the workplace, but a great majority of us are now required to work with computers, in some way. It has become a part of daily work practice that also forms part of our wider phy...

We have argued for an organizational approach to the management of stress, but also acknowledge that a successful stress management package will need to operate from more than one level. Indeed, a number of stress researchers have pointed out that stress control can be successful only if it is tackled at the level of the individual and the organiza...

The Chair Massage service considered in this evaluation study was provided to carers, visiting in-patients at a major cancer hospital in the UK. The two-stage evaluation comprised: firstly, a retrospective review of treatment records for the previous 12 months (n=182), and secondly, a prospective study, gathering data by interview and a 'next-day'...

This paper explores the principal activities of local authority staff undertaking the role of care manager. It is based on a sample of staff in a social services department specializing in older people's services. Data were obtained by asking staff to complete a diary schedule in which thirty-four job related activities were grouped into five broad...

Previous research has shown that levels of stress among national politicians are higher than among workers in comparable management jobs. The election of 236 new Members of Parliament (MPs) in the 1997 UK General Election permitted longitudinal study. The General Health Questionnaire-12 and Occupational Stress Indicator measured psychological and p...

Previous studies of stress in healthcare staff have indicated a probable high prevalence of distress. Whether this distress can be attributed to the stressful nature of the work situation is not clear. No previous study has used a detailed interview method to ascertain the link between stress in and outside of work and anxiety and depressive disord...

An evaluation was conducted of 15 voluntary sector family support workers (FSWs) working with families of schizophrenia sufferers. FSWs completed a diary schedule and interviews were conducted with 15 co-professionals from the FSWs' multi-disciplinary teams and 62 carers from FSWs' caseloads. Carers' problems were assessed using the burden componen...

Demands on Britain's Members of Parliament (MPs) have grown steadily over the last 15 years, resulting in parliamentary recommendations of working hours reform. This study was the first psychological research on national politicians and comprised two stages. Initially baseline data were gathered via questionnaire on the psychological impact of the...

This study assessed whether severity of psychiatric disorder varies across day hospital and in-patient units according to local need, and whether severity of disorder predicts length of stay and therefore costs. Data were collected for a consecutive series of 2230 in-patients and 712 day patients using the Social Behaviour Scale (data completed by...

The aims of this project are to develop an understanding of the strategies and mechanisms that might be used to transfer high standards of organisational performance, as measured by pre-defined performance targets, from one part of the department to a developing part of the organisation. The methodology for this study draws on a range of techniques...