Mental health and higher education: mapping field, consciousness and legitimation

Abstract

Some UK academics have declared that they do not want higher education to become part of the social welfare system. In this article we review aspects of policy and practice that suggest that this has already happened. Explicit encouragement of people with mental health problems to undertake courses has proceeded alongside a number of initiatives to make higher education institutions better able to support students in difficulty, and new responsibilities are being unfolded for the staff. There is growing evidence that students’ mental health problems are increasing. To make sense of the transformations in the topography of policy and in the consciousness it encourages, we make use of theoretical frameworks such as Bourdieu's notion of field and the generative work of Foucault and Rose, to examine the implications this has for the conceptualization of politics under New Labour and the implications this has for a newly recapitalized notion of responsible individuals.