Centre for Society and Mental Health

ESRC社会和心理健康中心将为我们理解社会、经济和文化变革如何影响心理健康带来重大进步。心理健康是政府和政策制定者的优先事项，从经济生产力到社区凝聚力和个人福祉。它本质上也是社会性的：促进心理健康或导致心理健康问题的因素存在于我们的社会、学校、工作场所、社区以及我们当代社会生活的性质中。社会背景、不平等和经历对心理健康的影响因社会群体和地理位置而异。我们正在经历一个快速而深远的变化时期，包括我们的环境（物理，社会，虚拟），社会组织（包括城市化，凝聚力，排斥，边缘化和劣势问题），技术变革（及其对关系和就业的影响）以及教育，工作和福利背景下的社会政策。然而，我们对我们的社会、经济、文化和个人生活的哪些方面影响我们的心理健康，以及如何或通过何种手段改变这些方面的认识还不够。因此，我们没有基于证据的政策来应对这些挑战，并了解特定的社会和经济压力对心理健康的性质和作用，也不了解增强复原力的个人和社会因素。该中心将汇集社会科学，流行病学，精神病学，神经科学，患者和公众参与以及政策分析的专业知识，以提出：当代重大社会变革对心理健康的积极和消极影响是什么？什么样的社会、经济和卫生政策可以支持个人和社区对心理健康问题的复原力的改善？我们将提出，回应和回答这些问题和其他关键问题，通过协调方案的理论上知情，实证，跨学科的研究。这些将与受影响的社区，精神卫生服务用户，政府部门，地方当局，学校和学院，社区组织，精神卫生慈善机构以及社会和经济政策制定者合作定义和提供。我们将与其他国家致力于这些问题的领先研究小组合作，并与现有的UKRI资助的研究基础设施合作。我们将评估现有的干预措施，应用新的概念，并开发创新的方法来了解心理健康和社会经验之间的关系。该中心将在三个关键领域开展研究计划，这些领域是社会，文化和经济变革带来的重大挑战，并可以从干预中受益：1）青年人中日益严重的心理健康问题; 2）弱势群体中精神健康问题的比例越来越不平等; 3）工作保障和福利提供方面的变化对精神健康的负面影响。对于每一个，我们将寻求了解心理健康轨迹（问题如何在生命过程中发展），生态学（社会和物质环境如何影响结果），以及脆弱性和脆弱性（为什么在不利的社会环境中，一些个人和群体会经历心理健康问题，而另一些人则不会）。我们的研究将确定放大或减弱社会转型对心理健康影响的因素，以及能够支持个人和群体心理健康的社会、经济和卫生政策。我们将培养新一代真正跨学科的社会科学家，他们拥有帮助政府，政策制定者和社区的知识，技能和承诺，不仅要更好地支持那些有心理健康问题的人，而且要为未来创造心理健康的社会。

The ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health will bring about significant advancements in our understanding of how social, economic and cultural transformations affect mental health.Mental health is a priority for governments and policy makers, in areas ranging from economic productivity to community cohesion and individual wellbeing. It is also intrinsically social: the factors that promote mental health or lead to mental health problems lie in our societies, our schools, our workplaces, our communities, and in the nature of our contemporary social lives. The impacts of social contexts, inequalities, and experiences on mental health differ by social group and vary geographically. We are living through a period of rapid and far-reaching change, in our environments (physical, social, virtual), social organisation (including issues around urbanisation, cohesion, exclusion, marginalisation and disadvantage), technological change (and its impact on relationships and employment), and social policy in the contexts of education, work and welfare. Yet we do not know enough about which dimensions of our social, economic, cultural and personal lives affect our mental health, how, or by what means they might be modified. As such, we do not have evidence-based policies to address these challenges and to understand the nature and role of particular social and economic stressors on mental health, nor an understanding of the individual and social factors that enhance resilience.The Centre will bring together expertise across social science, epidemiology, psychiatry, neuroscience, patient and public involvement, and policy analysis, to ask: What are the consequences for mental health, positive and negative, of major contemporary social transformations? What social, economic and health policies can support improvements in individual and community resilience to mental health problems?We will pose, respond to and answer these and other key questions through coordinated programmes of theoretically-informed, empirically-evidenced, interdisciplinary research. These will be defined and delivered in partnership with affected communities, mental health service users, government departments, local authorities, schools and colleges, community organisations, mental health charities, and social and economic policy makers. We will collaborate with leading research groups working on these issues in other countries, and with existing UKRI-funded research infrastructure. We will evaluate existing interventions, apply novel concepts, and develop innovative methods for understanding the relationship between mental health and social experiences.The Centre will carry out programmes of research across three key areas where social, cultural and economic transformations have produced substantial challenges, and which could benefit from intervention: 1) rising mental health problems among young people; 2) increasingly unequal rates of mental health problems in disadvantaged communities; and 3) the negative effects on mental health of changes in the security of work and the provision of welfare. For each, we will seek to understand mental health trajectories (how problems develop over the life course), ecologies (how social and material environments influence outcomes), and vulnerabilities and resiliencies (why some individuals and groups in adverse social contexts experience mental health problems while others do not).Our research will identify the factors that amplify or attenuate the impact of social transformation on mental health, and the social, economic and health policies that can support mental health in individuals and populations. We will train a new generation of genuinely interdisciplinary social scientists equipped with the knowledge, the skills and commitments to help governments, policy makers and communities, not just to better support those with mental health problems, but to create mentally healthy societies for the future.