Katie Pybus
Senior Lecturer in Mental Health

Profile

Biography

Katie is a Senior Lecturer in Mental Health with interests in the relationship between social security systems and mental
health, as well as the broader socioeconomic context of mental health and stigma. 

Katie completed her undergraduate degree in psychology before training to become a registered mental health nurse and working across a range of hospital and community settings in Yorkshire and London.  These experiences informed her research interests in the social determinants of mental health and illness, and she subsequently completed an ESRC funded PhD at the University of York in 2019.

Since this time, Katie has worked as a Government Social Researcher and as a research fellow at the University of York.  She joined Hull York Medical School as a Lecturer in 2022.

Qualifications

• PhD Health Sciences, University of York
• MSc Social Change, University of Manchester
• Accelerated Diploma in Mental Health Nursing, King’s College London
• BSc (Hons) Psychology, Lancaster University

Research

Overview

Katie's research interests include: mental health and social security; the socioeconomic context of mental health and stigma; structural forms of stigma; public attitudes towards mental illness and experiences of stigma.

Research group(s)

• Mental Health and Addiction
• HYMS - Centre for Health and Population Sciences

Available PhD research projects

Please get in touch to discuss

Supervision

• The relationship between social security and mental health
• The social determinants of mental health and illness, for example, the relationship between mental health and factors such as housing, income and socioeconomic inequalities
• Stigma

Publications

Selected publications

Pybus, K. (2025). A New State of Mind: Fairer Welfare Systems
for Better Mental Health. Policy Press (book).

Full publications list

• Katie Pybus's publications

External activities

Memberships

• Royal College of Nursing
• Social Policy Association
• Trustee for the Welfare Benefits Unit

Invited talks and conferences

• 2024: Social Policy Association Annual Conference. ‘Unseen
  injuries’: How is functioning related to mental health framed and
  understood in the Personal Independence Payment claims
  process?. Oral presentation/Symposium.
• 2023: ‘Listening to all voices’. The politics of lived experience
  conference. Durham University. Workshop/Oral presentation.
• 2023: Birkbeck University Social Research for the Public Good
  seminar series: Anxiety and the cost of living crisis (invited
  speaker).
• 2022: Just Festival Conversation Series: Covid and the Cost of
  Living. Edinburgh Fringe Festival (panel chair).
• 2022: Social Policy Association Annual Conference. Pressure
  upon pressure: social security and public mental health. Oral
  Presentation/Symposium.
• 2021: The Centre for Society and Mental Health and The Policy
  Institute “My biggest worry right now is the mental health of my
  children”. Youth mental health and COVID-19 – what do we
  know and what should we do? Oral presentation.
• 2021: Ask the author: Looking at the links between poverty,
  income inequality and food insecurity. University of York. Invited
  speaker (webinar).
• 2020: Understanding the barriers for people with labels of
  “personality disorder”. Local Area Coordinator training session.
  Invited speaker (webinar).
• 2020: Ethnic inequalities, racism and food poverty in the UK. N8
  Agrifood conference (webinar). Oral presentation.
• 2019: Linking Leeds seminar, Department for Work and Pensions: Extending the parity of esteem agenda: mental illness and stigma from a socioeconomic perspective. Invited speaker. 
• 2019: ‘It can happen to anybody’ Yorkshire and Humber Public Health Network conference on mental health: A world free of stigma and discrimination. Invited speaker.

Media coverage

• Changes to the disability benefits system need to prioritise evidence over short term cost savings - BMJ Opinion 2025
• Benefit cuts risk harming mental health - Transforming Society 2025
• ‘I feel like a failure’: Universal credit parents face mental health nosedive Big Issue 7 May 2021
• We must break the link between mental health and poverty Big Issue 10 May 2021
• Mental health: Why PM's pledges will fall short until families have more cash Big Issue 15 May 2021
• Mental Health: Assessment, Hansard 22 January 2019
• Mentally ill people more at risk of losing benefits, study shows, The Guardian 22 January 2019
• People with mental illness are most at risk of losing benefits, study shows, The BMJ 22 January 2019
• People with mental health problems are more likely to lose their benefits, The Big Issue 22 January 2019
• Mentally ill claimants more than twice as likely to lose benefits, Huffington Post 22 January 2019
• Brits with mental health problems TWICE as likely to lose up to £140 a week in benefits, The Sun 22 January 2019

Teaching

Undergraduate

Katie teaches across a range of undergraduate medicine and nursing modules on topics relating to mental health, inequalities and
research methods

Postgraduate

Co-lead for the MSc Mental Health Research