On September 6th 2017, Wellesley Institute and CAMH hosted Professor Nikolas Rose, an international expert on the role of cities in Mental Health from King’s College London. This talk explores the impact of urban environments on the brain and the role of the city in mental health and mental illness and asks: how does stress get under the skin, and what can we do about it?
This talk was moderated by Dr. Kwame McKenzie from Wellesley Institute and the Cheif Resilience Officer for the City of Toronto, Elliott Cappell, was the respondent.
Professor Nikolas Rose is an international expert on the impact of living in cities on mental health and well-being and the neurosocial city and is coming to Toronto to share his work looking at mental health and the megacity and what policymakers can do to produce cities that make us well.
Action to lower stress and promote mental health and well-being in cities are a public good. Conditions like noise, pollution, growing income inequality, racism and the rising costs of housing, transit and child care in populations whose incomes can’t keep up all produce stress. Certain sectors of populations consistently experience high levels of these conditions. Researchers like Professor Nikolas Rose help us to understand the collective conditions in cities under which stress emerges, the collective ills that these conditions produce and what can be done to mitigate these stressors and promote mental health and well-being in the here and now.
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