Dr Federica Amati

Our mental health and our physical health depends on our environment.

So we know that our environment is not supporting our health.

So it's kind of no surprise that whilst our physical health is worsening, our mental health will also worsen because we are one thing.

So you can't separate people into systems, right?

If I said to you, you know, Jimmy, I've got really terrible backache.

Well, that backache will be impacting my sleep.

It will be impacting my mood because I'm not sleeping and I'm in pain.

It will impact how much I'm able to move, which will then impact other things.

We don't live in systems.

We live as whole people.

And in the same way that our physical health is suffering, our environment isn't set up for us to thrive, our mental health is obviously going to suffer too.

Yeah, and it's pointless, actually.

The patients that I looked at in my PhD, they were mental health service users.

And when you look, I try to predict, how could you predict patient outcomes?

Like, what is it about the people coming into the services that could help us understand whether they're likely to recover or not?

That was my question.

And the answers were various, but one of them is basically you can't take context away.

So if somebody comes into a mental health service and they have no access to housing and they can't get nutritious food every day and they have lived a trauma.

then we can give the best cognitive behavior therapy there is, and they'll improve.

But they're not going to be undepressed.