Episode 3 Psychic Pilates
China “We’ve been all made to believe that work defines our worth….we’ve come to believe that even if we don’t want to believe it….We carry a lot of that shame and we are complicit in perpetuating it….A healing piece around that shame is hugely important….how can we shift that in our selves to make sure we’re not reproducing it?”
Linda “Absolutely….and as you were saying towards the end, the impact of shame on individuals and bereaved families, to feel they can’t live up to these ideals and have failed in some way when in fact these systems are just so powerful against them…”
Sarah “….The discussion around suicide can often feel narrow and restricted about what’s said and what you can say…..Part of the inspiration behind this project is to get people together from very different disciplinary perspectives….with very different ideas about how we should proceed…..we are opening this up and that is not without its complexity and is daunting….I suppose our challenge is to embrace that pluralism, that diversity. Our challenge is not to reinforce our own silos.”
Stories of UberTherapy is a series of six recorded conversations with therapists, social justice activists, trade unionists and progressive tech campaigners to ask if a MuchBetter.Help is possible.
In Episode 3 Psychic Pilates with China Mills (Dealths by Welfare), Emily Yue (Healing Justice London) & Sarah Waters (Work Related Suicide Project/Wellcome), researchers and activists working together on work related suicide help us to understand the weaponisation of work, welfare and mental health under austerity.
Hosted by James Farrar, Linda Michaels and Elizabeth Cotton on 11 September 6.30-7.30pm you are invited to attend the launch of our podcast series based around the six chapters of UberTherapy: The new business of mental health.
To read about the podcast series & book your tickets go to www.muchbetter.help
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This book will change your life - No More Deaths by Welfare by China Mills published by Pluto Press here
China Mills is Head of Research at Healing Justice London and leads the Deaths by Welfare Project, documenting welfare state violence by centring the resistance of people with lived experience of the welfare system, and the strategies of bereaved families, in fighting for justice. For many years, China worked as an academic researching and teaching global mental health, with a focus on state and corporate production of harm, distress and deaths by suicide.
Sarah Waters is professor of French Studies, former Deputy Head of School (2015–2017) and Head of French (2011–2014) at the University of Leeds. Sarah’s recent research, funded by the Wellcome Trust and subsequently an AHRC research leaders fellowship has focused on work-related suicide and labour theory in France. This research was published as a monograph Suicide Voices. Labour Trauma in France by Liverpool University Press in 2020. She was awarded funding by Research England in 2021 to undertake a qualitative study of work-related suicide in the UK and is currently carrying out a comparative study in France, Canada and the UK funded by the Wellcome.
Emily Yue Emily Yue is Work-Related Suicide and Social Justice Researcher at Healing Justice Ldn. Emily researches suicide from social justice perspectives. She is interested in how we understand ‘evidence’ about suicide, in particular around race. Her PhD research explored the ways UK suicide reporting and prevention focuses on white men and distracts from state violence, gatekeeping how we see cause and effect, and agency, in our knowledge about suicide. She previously worked at the University of Edinburgh, where she explored how male suicide prevention reproduces ableism through focusing on productivity and paid work. Emily is guided by disability justice and abolition, paying attention to and creating space for rest in responses to suicide and approaches to suicide recovery.
*GabSpace graphics designed by Austin Hughes, The American Psychoanalyst tapmagazine.org
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