How does fuel poverty affect mental health?: designing and testing a theoretical framework
What are we trying to do?
We are reviewing current studies to assessing the relationship between fuel poverty and mental health to collate the available evidence. From this review, we will assess the proposed reasons (or ‘pathways’) behind how fuel poverty affects mental health and produce a theoretical framework. Then, we will assess the relationship between fuel poverty and mental health, the inequalities in this, and then test some of the pathways we identified
Why is it important?
We know quite a lot about how the immediate home environment affects the health of residents and the associated inequalities by things like income, ethnicity, and household type. Within the current cost of living crisis, being unable to afford to heat the home (fuel poverty) is receiving greater attention from policy makers and the media. However, research to date has mostly focused on the physical health impacts and tended to ignore the effects on mental health and resulting inequalities. This study aims to better understand the ways fuel poverty affects mental health and how this affects society unequally
How are we doing it?
We are reviewing current studies to assessing the relationship between fuel poverty and mental health to collate the available evidence.
From this review, we will assess the proposed reasons (or ‘pathways’) behind how fuel poverty affects mental health and produce a theoretical framework. Then, we will assess the relationship between fuel poverty and mental health, the inequalities in this, and then test some of the pathways we identified through a quantitative analysis of data from the UK survey Understanding Society.
We will use several measures of fuel poverty (including a question relating to whether an individual feels able to heat their home, data on the proportion of household income spent on heating the home, and smart meter data) and a commonly used mental health measure.
Research team:
- Sam Khavandi (Co-Principle Investigator)
- Dr Natalie Bennett (Co-Principle Investigator)
Who are we working with?
Funding:
This research is funded via an £9,975 award from the NIHR ARC Health and Care Inequalities and Prevention, including Behavioural Risk Factors National Priority Consortia.
More information:
Senior Programme Lead
Mike Spence