Jerry Tew is Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Birmingham and Social Care Lead for the Heart of England Hub of the Mental Health Research Network.  He has many years’ experience as a specialist mental health social worker and is a founder member of the Social Perspectives Network, a national organisation which has been at the forefront of developing a stronger social aspect to mental health policy, research and practice. 

He is the editor of Social Perspectives in Mental Health (Jessica Kingsley, 2005) and contributed to the joint Position Paper on Recovery A Common Purpose with the Royal college of Psychiatrists and the Social Care Institute of Excellence. His research interests have been in the application of social theory to mental distress (with a particular emphasis on power relations and social capital), family and community perspectives on mental health, and learning from the direct experience of those who have mental health difficulties.

His new book, Social Approaches to Mental Distress is due to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in early 2011.  Grounded in research and people’s direct experience, this offers an analysis of the crucial role played by social factors and life events in bringing on (or averting) mental distress, and sets out a vision for mental health practice that emphasises the centrality of issues of social identity, participation and relationship within people’s journeys through distress towards recovery