Breadwinning, mental health and the geographies of masculinity

Within the field of psychiatric rehabilitation, workplaces are viewed as critical sites for recovery from mental ill health; most people living with mental ill health are portrayed as ‘wanting to work’ despite the fact that it can be difficult to find and retain employment. At the same time, the organisation and meaning of paid work is profoundly gendered, with work outside the home still linked to normative conceptions of masculinity. In this chapter, we look critically at how gender and mental ill health come together in relation to paid work. Drawing on arts-informed qualitative research, we consider how men living with mental ill health understand and enact masculinity when they are excluded from spaces of paid work.