Lynne Friedli

An edited transcript from a conversation between Nina Garthwaite, a former receptionist at a homeless hostel in London and four of the hostel residents: Mick Hatter, Jon Jonn, Stewart Maxwell and Frank Benson. In it, they reflect on a series of discussions held in 2015 and 2016 chaired by Dr. Lynne Friedli, a freelance researcher with a special int...

This chapter includes an extract from a conversation between Lynne Friedli (a researcher with a special interest in mental health and social justice) and Nina Garthwaite (a founder of In The Dark, an arts organization dedicated to creative radio storytelling, who also worked for six years at a homeless hostel in London), and draw on a series of mee...

Unemployment is not a psychological disorder in need of mandatory treatment, say Lynne Friedli and Robert Stearn

Eligibility for social security benefits in many advanced economies is dependent on unemployed and underemployed people carrying out an expanding range of job search, training and work preparation activities, as well as mandatory unpaid labour (workfare). Increasingly, these activities include interventions intended to modify attitudes, beliefs and...

The publication of this manifesto could hardly have come at a more important moment. Not just because, as the authors signal, there is a crisis in psychological explanations, but because psychology faces a wider moral and ethical crisis. An early version of some of the ideas in this paper was presented (with Robert Stearn) at the Critical Medical H...

It is a paradox of recent epidemiology that as material inequalities grow, so the pursuit of non-material explanations for health outcomes proliferates. At one level, a greater recognition of psycho-social factors has deepened the understanding of the societal determinants of health, the links between mental and physical health and the social natur...

The current discourse on resilience is intuitively appealing - it focuses on strengths or assets (rather than deficits), it is consistent with key themes within the recovery movement and it reassures us that, after all, individuals and communities are capable of adapting to adversity. A focus on resilience also speaks to the resistance of deprived...

From" Foresight State-of-Science Review: SR-B3." Summary This report reviews the literature on the conceptualisation of positive mental health and outlines current understanding on the determinants of mental health and their implications for research, policy and practice.The concept of positive mental health is introduced and its contribution to th...

Mental health is fundamental to good health and quality of life and also infl uences social and economic outcomes across the lifespan. In the UK, Europe and globally, there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of mental health and wellbeing to overall health in recent years (WHO, 2001; 2002, 2004a; 2004b; Jané-Llopis and Anderson 20...

This paper uses economic analysis to develop the case for greater investment in mental health promotion. One example of a common mental health problem for which there is robust evidence of effective interventions is conduct disorder. The paper estimates that preventing conduct disorders in those children who are most disturbed would save around £15...

This paper describes the qualitative evaluation of Imagine East Greenwich (IEG), a series of arts/health projects developed as part of a regeneration programme on two housing estates in a London borough. The evaluation seeks to identify (through consultation with various stakeholders) indicators for measuring the impact of arts/health on communitie...

Choosing Health is the first government public health white paper since Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation, published in 1999. It aims to make the NHS ‘a health service, not a sickness service,’ and is strongly influenced by the Wanless reports. This paper presents a critical review of the main elements of the white paper that relate to mental heal...

The current interest in evidence-based practice has led to a growing literature on the role of education and training in getting evidence to inform professional practice. This report outlines the findings of an evaluation of a series of evidence-into-practice training workshops designed to strengthen evidence-based practice in the delivery of menta...

Religion and mental health are not easy issues to address within the same framework. The unstable boundary between symptoms of psychosis and some forms of religious inspiration is only one element in a complex debate about the relationship between spirituality and mental health. Growing evidence of the significance of religious belief to people wit...

There are encouraging signs that mental health, as opposed to mental illness, is beginning to move up the political agenda, but much still needs to be done to challenge misconceptions. Drawing on the growing literature on social capital, this paper looks at the case for building a new agenda for mental health promotion, one which recognises that we...

Chapter overview This chapter covers: The emergence of mental health promotion as a discipline; Different definitions of mental health promotion; Public mental health and population approaches; Mental health promotion and recovery. It concludes by highlighting three key challenges for the future of mental health promotion and public mental health:...