TASC: Theory and Analysis of Social Capital in Mental Health Research

Established: April 2005

Convenor (Chair): Professor Justine Schneider, University of Nottingham

Members: Peter Byrne (psychiatrist); Professor Trudy Harpham (geographer); Anne Kouvonen, (psychologist); Kwame McKenzie (psychiatrist and senior lecturer, Royal Free and UCL); Professor Justine Schneider (convenor); Ian Shaw (sociologist); Mary De Silva (epidemiologist); Mai Stafford (statistician); Martin Webber (social science research fellow); Richard Wilkinson (social epidemiologist); Service user and carer input drawn from the resources of Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust.

Remit and Aims:
Social capital has been defined as the embedded resources of a society. An understanding of social capital can inform the configuration and delivery of mental health services, offering new approaches to prevention of mental illness, involvement of service users, and de-stigmatisation.

Numerous barriers to social inclusion of people with mental health problems have been identified, including stigma, discrimination and lack of community engagement. Overcoming such obstacles poses a major challenge to services. It might even be argued that that mental health services are inherently stigmatising, discriminatory and segregated from the community. Effective inclusion and destigmatisation require structural change. Social capital offers one means of conceptualising and, potentially, of promoting such change.

The aim of this research group is to develop an understanding of the concept and its potential applications in mental health research.

Current Status & Future Plans:
· The group has formulated a lay definition of social capital.

· A very successful national conference was held in October 2006 with significant participation from among service users. This generated a number of research ideas and engaged people from a wide range of disciplines in the topic.  It is hoped that as a result the group will expand and generate even more research proposals.

· Conferences: Mai Stafford has had a proposal for a symposium on social capital and mental health accepted by the World Association for Social Psychiatry for its conference in October 07 in Prague. Martin Webber, Anne Kouvonen and Justine Schneider will be attending.

Research grants in past year:
1) Title: Ethnic Density Effects on Physical Health.
Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson with colleagues at the University of York have won an MRC grant to run 3 years, 2007-2010, for £290,000.   The group (or ethnic) density effect is when members of minorities seem to have worse health when they live in areas dominated by the majority community rather than in areas where other members of their minority are concentrated.  It is probably related to social capital because it is likely to reflect the effects of stigmatization, lack of social support etc.

2) Title: Racial discrimination and health: exploring the possible protective
effects of ethnic density.
Investigators: Stafford, Nazroo & Becares.
Duration: Oct 2007-Sept 2009
Funding: ESRC £116968.24

Martin Webber was part of Peter Huxley's team who were successful in winning the bid for phase 2 of the development of a social inclusion index funded by the NHS Health Technology Assessment programme. As part of the validation of this index we propose to test the measure of social capital alongside the social inclusion index to examine correlations and, through factor analysis, shared dimensions.

Recent publications:
Kouvonen A, Kivimaki M, Vahtera J, Oksanen T, Elovainio M, Cox T, Virtanen M, Pentti J, Cox SJ, Wilkinson RG.  Psychometric evaluation of a short measure of social capital at work. BMC Public Health. 2006 Oct 13;6:251. Erratum in: BMC Public Health. 2007;7:90. 

Webber, M. & Huxley, P. (2007) "Measuring access to social capital: The validity and reliability of the Resource Generator-UK and its association with common mental disorder", Social Science and Medicine, 65, 481-492.

In progress
Several papers submitted.

A proposal to investigate social capital in relation to housing support is in preparation, led by Peter Byrne with Nottingham colleagues. 

With advice and support from TASC members, service user researchers in Nottingham are currently undertaking a pilot, qualitative study of long term service users.  This will inform future bids, as well as preparing the way for their implementation.