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Event recordings for Mental Health and Wellbeing Lunch Hour Lecture series now available
8 November 2024
Last month, UCL’s Grand Challenge of Mental Health and Wellbeing hosted four webinars, as part of UCL's Lunch Hour Lecture Series, showcasing the university's collective expertise in cross-disciplinary research aimed at prevention and early intervention.
Mental health is one of the most pressing societal issues of our time. With rising rates of mental illness, especially among young people, and significant global disparities in care, innovative and comprehensive solutions are more crucial than ever. Mental health affects everything from individual wellbeing to economic stability, necessitating a holistic approach that focuses on both prevention and early intervention.
UCL’s Grand Challenge of Mental Health and Wellbeing seeks to be a catalyst for transformative change, driving improvements in mental health through groundbreaking research, collaborative practices, and strategic partnerships.
Explore the recordings below to hear insights from UCL’s leading mental health experts as they discuss how to tackle these challenges from a variety of perspectives.
Lunch Hour Lecture | Mental health inequality: What can you and I do about it?
Health disparities are a well-known issue, but what can we do as individuals to improve this global challenge? In this lecture, Dr Keri Wong presented her current research on how better assessments of mental health in children and young people can pave the way to reducing community health inequalities over time.
Also available on SoundCloud: Mental health inequality: What can you and I do about it?
Lunch Hour Lecture | Mental health in the workplace: What's possible in an impossible world?
This talk explored the benefits and challenges of work for our mental health. With a specific focus on working in academia and unrealistic expectations, Professors Billings and Shafran discussed the demands that staff face working in Universities in a post-pandemic context and focused on what we can do as an organisation, and as individuals, to support mental health and wellbeing at work.
Also available on SoundCloud: Mental health in the workplace: What's possible in an impossible world?
Lunch Hour Lecture | Unequal mental health: Society, power and the depressogenic environment
Common mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety are leading causes of disease burden worldwide, and there are reports of worsening mental health in many countries. In this talk, Professor Praveetha Patalay illustrated how the experience of poor mental health is unequal within societies – groups with less political, social and economic power often experience substantially worse mental health.
Also available on SoundCloud: Unequal mental health: Society, power and the depressogenic environment
Lunch Hour Lecture | The antidepressant controversy
Antidepressants have been the topic of polarised debate, particularly on social media and in other media outlets. The sources of controversy have remained the same for many years and include discussions about the effectiveness of antidepressants, and how often and severely people experience discontinuation symptoms. This lunch hour lecture led by Professor Glyn Lewis and Dr Gemma Lewis focussed on the case for recognising the role of the ‘depressogenic’ environment.
Also available on SoundCloud:The antidepressant controversy