An accumulating body of evidence suggests that financial precarity bears a negative causal effect on mental distress and ill-health. Recent global and local events have resulted in an ‘age of crisis’, the negative consequences of which are acutely experienced within the ‘left behind’ North East region. Neoliberal welfare reforms – with their emphasis on individual responsibility – are conceptually consistent with the bio-medical model. The Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) implicates power imbalances and inequalities as having negative effects on mental distress/ill-health, as an alternative to this.
The concurrent effect of financial crises on mental health service provision has seen the spontaneous growth of grassroots mutual aid groups offering practical and emotional support within their communities. Paradoxically, mental distress may reduce the capacity for engagement in such mutual aid initiatives – often with the consequence of groups of non-engagers being labelled as ‘difficult to reach’. My mixed methods research – using the PTMF as a framework- explores the impacts of mutual aid groups on mitigating mental ill health; in addition to the complexities of engagement with, and participation in, mutual aid initiatives.
