Mapping mental health and the UK university sector: Networks, markets, data

Abstract

The mental health and well-being of university staff and students in the UK are reported to have seriously deteriorated. Rather than taking this ‘mental health crisis’ at face value, we carry out network and discourse analyses to investigate the policy assemblages (comprising social actors, institutions, technologies, knowledges and discourses) through which the ‘crisis' is addressed. Our analysis shows how knowledges from positive psychology and behavioural economics, disciplinary techniques driven by metrics and data analytics, and growing markets in digital therapeutic technologies work as an ensemble. Together, they instrumentalise mental health, creating motivational ecologies that allow economic agendas to seep through to subjects who are encouraged to monitor and rehabilitate themselves. Mental health’ as a problem for UK universities has come to be largely defined through the outcomes of ‘resilience’ and ‘employability’ and is addressed through markets that enable training, monitoring, measuring and ‘nudging’ students and staff towards these outcomes.

Algorithmic violence

“…Other research clearly links mental health problems to insecure forms of employment such as zero-hours contracts and self-employment (Marmot, 2020) with an emerging literature that links wellbeing to the specific impact of performance management on conditions of work (Boxall & Macky, 2014). Reports on mental health in universities link unsustainable workloads, work insecurity for staff and performance management systems to the evidenced increase in mental health problems within the academic workforce (Wray & Kinsman, 2021;Kotouza, Callard, Garnett & Rocha, 2022). The crisis has been compounded by the experience of working through the pandemic -linked to work intensification, increased student distress, isolation and lack of social support at work (Morrish & Priaulx, 2020).…”

“…Multiple surveys indicate the clear link between workloads and work intensification on academics' wellbeing -although stopping short of linking the model of performance management and metrics used within HE management explicitly with wellbeing and mental health problems, including the link to suicide (Waters & Palmer, 2022). While universities routinely offer wellbeing programmes for staff, this is dominated by a focus on positive psychology and short-term and individual interventions (Kotouza, Callard, Garnett & Rocha, 2022), supplied by contractors providing Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) including those provided by large online therapy and health platforms. Experience of EAPs is mixed but, in the UK, they often only offer short-term (six sessions) limited Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) placing pressure on both client and therapy practitioner to show high recovery rates, as is required across the wellbeing and short-term therapy sector (Cotton, 2021).…”

‘You Don’t Get Ditched’—Young People’s Mental Health and Youth Work: Challenging Dominant Perspectives

“…The discussion is set in the context of the decrease in young people's mental health across the UK and explores how the youth work approach addresses some of the key factors negatively affecting young people's mental well-being. This study is set in the context of the lack of statutory mental health services available to young people, the social construction of mental ill health [1], and the risk of medicalizing young people's emotional experiences. It demonstrates how the non-medicalizing approach taken within youth work, which is person-centered, based on the establishment of trusting relationships, as well as involving the creation of safe spaces and providing supportive experiences can have a significant positive influence and improve young people's mental health.…”

Mental health in universities in an age of digital capitalism: The United Kingdom as exemplary case

“…In the UK, which we consider here as an exemplary site, these infrastructures rely extensively on digitalisation and the involvement of corporate actors, which bring multiple political and ethical implications. However, literature and data on student mental health and well-being rarely address the systems and infrastructures used in higher education (HE) (Kotouza et al, 2021), and the fragmentation of evidence used obscures potential causes of ill health (Hern andez-Torrano et al, 2020;Oman & Bull, 2021). Social theorists have addressed how the political-economic configurations of late capitalism have damaging psychosocial effects, at the same time as they magnify focus on producing and measuring subjects' 'wellbeing' (Davies, 2011).…”