And This Time It’s Personal: Psychocompulsion and Workfare

At the very moment when the Government is reducing the ability of NHS mental health practitioners to serve those who are unwell, they are investing public money in dubious mental health programmes.

Within such programmes, unemployed people will be coerced into participation under threat of benefit sanctions.
The Government is trying to persuade us that unemployment is a mental illness, rather than a result of adverse economic conditions created by Capital.
This film explores the underpinnings of the psycho-coercive practices endorsed by the Government with leading academic researchers and the Mental Health Resistance Network.

Producer: Lene Auestad
Research: Karen Whelan, Lene Auestad
Camera: Julia Brown, Lene Auestad, Paul Barnett
Editor: Paul Barnett

With: Roy Bard, Mental Health Resistance Network, Link
Lynne Friedli, The Hub at Wellcome Collection, Link
Andrew Samuels, Prof. University of Essex, Link
Robert Stearn, Birkbeck, University of London
Philip Thomas. Writer, Link

Made for WellRed Films by OpenEye Film members, March 1st 2016.

This film was screened with a panel discussion at the Freud Museum London December 6th 2016. Link to the event