Clever clogseses come from near (University of Nottingham) and far (Nottingham Trent University) to talk about their research in front of a pub full of interested punters. It must be PubhD
First up is Verusca, who is researching an oral history of the psychiatric hospitals in Nottinghamshire.
This is part of our local history and Verusca is exploring it through interview with former patients and staff at Mapperley and Saxondale. Mapperley opened in 1880 and was an asylum until mental health reforms in the fifties. Saxondale closed in 1988 and Mapperley shut its doors in 1994. Verusca plans to get between 25 and 30 life histories from these in-depth interviews about people's experiences before and after their time in these hospitals. Hopefully this will be used to feed back into future mental healthcare policy.
Psychiatric hospitals are often thought of as places of abuse. While there definitely was some level of abuse at these institutions, many people talk about them as a place of sanctuary and of being looked after. The stories of abuse were exaggerated and given more credence because they fitted in with the idea of closing the hospitals. There was social control and constraint, but also social networking, which isn't happening now with care in the community.
So, what has been lost with the closure of these hospitals? Well, we no longer have anywhere to go. Have we forgotten who we're trying to help? The people interviewed didn’t want the legacy of the hospitals to be ignored. These places had large grounds, lots of space and the patients may have been given jobs or even become surrogate grandparents for the children of staff who lived on site. The current context of mental healthcare is inadequate; despite closing the hospitals, there are still problems and now people have nowhere to go.
In the hospitals, relationships formed not only between the staff and the patients but also between patients and other patients. In a modern acute unit, you can't make these connections. We need to rethink the idea of the asylum. There is still stigma and shame attached with talking about mental health. Can we bring about change? Social exclusion works on so many different levels. Can we redress the historical record where Mapperley was known as Mapperley Madhouse, where there was genuine fear of the asylum and vilification of the staff?
Key learning: Some psychiatric hospitals even had bakeries and banks on site and Saxondale had a sewing room until the day it closed.
Next up is Blaine, who is researching mathematical networks and specifically the maximum cut of a network.
A network is made up of nodes and edges connecting them. They can represent anything, for example a power grid or even the rabbit hole that is Wikipedia. You can apply any context and then use mathematical concepts. The max cut is where you split the nodes in the network into two groups and then try and maximise the number of connections between the two groups.
For example, imagine someone had proposed to you and you'd accepted. You then change your mind but instead of having an adult conversation with your intended, you decide to completely sabotage the wedding to make it clear that the two of you are not compatible. If your family are all Celtic fans and your betrothed's family are all Rangers fans then you want to make sure that lots of your family sit next to lots of theirs. Hence chaos ensues and you are out of the marriage.
All of this gets very complicated as you increase the number of nodes. The sterling number describes how many different ways you can partition the nodes into two groups. It's defined as:
S(n,2) = 2n-1-1
where "n" is the number of nodes. So, if you have 50 nodes you get
s(50,2) = 250-1-1 = 562,949,953,421,311
which is a lot of ways of arranging nodes.
The options increase so rapidly that you can't easily find a solution. How do you approximate within a certain degree of accuracy? The current "state of the art" solution has an 87% accuracy rate. You can also look at the pinch points of a network to see where you can do the most damage.
Key learning: Solving the max cut problem is worth $1,000,000
Finally, we have Anthony, whose research is on human geography.
Health geography looks at the impacts of built environment on health. For example, the impact of building lots of off-licences on how much people drink. How do we build cities that encourage health? What is the impact of neighbourhoods on things like sleep patterns? What is the impact of having lots of fresh food stores on the amount of fruit that people eat? How does this change the amount of healthy food people eat at home and at work, since most people don't spend that much time at home?
Anthony has also been involved in a programme in Canada that is looking at building a solution for homelessness in people with mental illness. The research involves looking at improvements in physical and mental health against cost effectiveness. Previously, there had been a staged approach: treatment, temporary shelter, permanent housing. Now, there's a different approach – people are put straight into permanent housing and are then given any help that they need such as psychiatric help or a care worker. Many of these people have drug addictions or physical health conditions too.
These people now have homing stability, and are not homeless anymore. 73% remain in the permanent housing – those that leave do so because their social networks are on the street. In the control group, only 32% remained in the housing. Those people who are on the programme have a higher quality of life, they are more involved in sports and leisure activities and an improved sense of security. There is also an improvement in self-rate mental health. For every $10 spent, an additional $7 is saved and in high-needs cases, it's $25. The first five years received $110M in funding and an additional $40M for the next five has just been announced. The programme is a great way to exit people from homelessness.
Key leaning: In winter, the temperature in Toronto can drop to -30oC
PubhD returns in the new year. The first event of 2017 will be on Wednesday 18 January, 7.30pm, at The Vat & Fiddle. The talks will be on microbiology, ecology and archaeology. It's also PubhD's third birthday so even if you don't like your "ologies" there will still be cake.
PubhD website
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