Health and masculinity in post war britain

Dr Ali Haggett is currently working on a three-year Wellcome Trust funded project on masculinity and health since the Second World War. Its broad remit is threefold. Firstly, it aims to uncover the ways in which constructions of masculinity impacted upon patterns of psychological and psychosomatic illness amongst men. Secondly, it will explore the relationship between notions of masculinity and men’s willingness to report symptoms; and thirdly, it examines attitudes of clinicians and their approaches to treating men.

This project builds upon previous work on housewives and neurosis in post-war Britain which was also funded by the Wellcome Trust. This study will be published as a monograph entitled Desperate Housewives, Neuroses and the Domestic Environment 1945-70 with Pickering and Chatto (forthcoming).