Project leader: Jeremy Clarke CBE
This project seeks to explore how mental illness – the invisible 6th Giant – is able to replicate itself silently at the intersection of modern welfare policies. Far from being happy, as Brexit has exposed, we appear to be angry and disillusioned. Mental illness develops in this kind of troubled social and interpersonal context. How do we find out about what causes it? How it replicates? What professional response is needed? How do we know if this is going to work?
The key hypotheses are that our modern wellbeing industries (social security, education, health, housing, employment and, crucially, our emergent mental health system), have all tended to operate in giant, bureaucratic silos, each pursuing a false construct of ‘universal happiness’. Mental illness (chronic depression and anxiety) locates itself invisibly at their local intersection. Making visible the specific interpersonal dimension of misery - through which ‘real’ happiness can be attained - is a necessary step towards better welfare policy.
The project has three principal streams: developing integrated employment and mental health programmes (part of an ERC funded study, Knowledge for Use); finding out what works for whom in different therapies for depression (an HQIP funded National Audit & forthcoming NICE clinical guideline for depression); and understanding how improved staff wellbeing in NHS psychological therapy services can be sustained (an annual survey and a BPS/Division of Clinical Psychology funded project based at CPNSS, LSE). There is a cross-cutting methodological exploration of single case studies as a way to establish causal claims.
Where is the 6th Giant today? The ‘invisible hand’ of mental illness: a contemporary ‘burning injustice’
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Clarke, J.C. & Fletcher, A. (2018) Working Well Evaluation Report - A qualitative evaluation of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority Working Well programme, carried out November 2017 – May 2018
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This research was supported by a European Research Council grant, Knowledge for Use [K4U]: Making the Most of Social Science to Build Better Policies (667526-ERC-2014-ADG).
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Tasca, G., Town, J., Abbass A., & Clarke, J.C. (2018) Will publicly funded psychotherapy in Canada be evidence-based? A review of what makes psychotherapy work and a proposal Canadian Psychology 59(4) 293-300
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Clarke, J.C. (2018) Guest Editorial: The social and interpersonal origins of depression today Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy 32(2) 95-101
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Hacker Hughes, J., Rao, A., Dosanjh, N., Cohen-Tovee, E., Clarke, J.C., & Bhutani, G. (2016) Editorial: Physician Heal Thyself (Luke 4:23) British Journal of Psychiatry 209 447-448
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(forthcoming) When might hard cases make good ‘epistemic laws’ and when not? Epistemic injustice within integrated mental health and social care
Jeremy Clarke LSE & Durham & Andrew Fletcher Durham University, Knowledge for Use
Society for Women in Philosophy annual conference, University of Kent, 1st May 2019
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(forthcoming) Is IAPT an evidence-based programme? (Or The Great Escape – why did it fail?)
Jeremy Clarke former National adviser to IAPT & current National expert adviser, NICE depression guideline
Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, London 12th April 2019
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Workforce wellbeing in psychological therapies: analysis of trends, improving our measure and taking forward the Charter
Gita Bhutani, BPS & Amra Rao, BPS with Jeremy Clarke, New Savoy Partnership
12th annual conference: National Assembly Brexit, what Brexit? London 22nd March, 2019
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Single Case Causation: model cases and the evidential requirements for causal inference
Jeremy Clarke LSE and Durham University, Knowledge for Use
Society for Psychotherapy Research Annual Conference, Amsterdam, June 2018
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Using model case studies experimentally to predict structural change in psychotherapy: can we theorise change mechanisms and trace causal processes to predict what will work for whom?
With Professor Bill Stiles, Miami University, Jeremy Clarke, LSE & Durham & Professor Nancy Cartwright, Durham University and University of California, San Diego
Seminar Room, Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, 6th November 2018
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Are single cases our royal road to understanding mechanisms? (Or: if you don’t have a dog, hunt with a cat!).
With Professor Bruce Wampold, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin, Jeremy Clarke LSE & Durham and Professor Nancy Cartwright, Durham University and University of California, San Diego
Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences, Lakatos Building, LSE, 17th March 2017
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Talking therapies 2: What should an evidence based pathway for improving work and wellbeing look like to the people who are on it?
With Professor Robert Elliott, University of Strathclyde, Jeremy Clarke LSE and Durham and Professor Nancy Cartwright, Durham University and University of California, San Diego
Centre for Humanities Engaging Science and Society, University of Durham, 3rd June 2016
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Talking therapies 1: What evidence works best for which NICE therapy for depression? (Using a single case efficacy design to work out whether it worked and why in a single case)
With Professor Robert Elliott, University of Strathclyde, Jeremy Clarke LSE and Durham and Professor Nancy Cartwright, Durham University and University of California, San Diego