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 has been acutely experienced by people within the ‘left behind’ North East region. Neoliberal welfare reforms – with their emphasis on individual responsibility – are conceptually consistent with disease models of mental health which attribute causation to individual psychopathologies. In contrast, the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) implicates power imbalances and inequalities as having negative causal effects on mental distress/ill-health.
The concurrent effect of financial crises on mental health service provision – with attendant lack of access to services – has seen the spontaneous growth of grassroots mutual aid groups offering practical and emotional support within their communities. Paradoxically, mental distress (as experienced at an individual level) 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’. This research will explore the impacts of mutual aid groups on mitigating mental distress/ill-health as well as the complexities of engagement with, and participation in, mutual aid initiatives. Data will be co-produced by engaging with Tyneside mutual aid groups and Johnson’s Tyneside Policy Implementation Group. A mixed methods approach will analyse ongoing quarterly panel survey data and individual biographical narratives to inform good practice in mutual aid provision and provide an evidence base to support stakeholder policy decisions.
