‘All your value is wrapped up in your capabilities’: negotiating mental health disability, masculinity and paid work

Vocational rehabilitation views participation in employment as a key marker of ‘overcoming’ mental health disability. At the same time, the organization and experience of employment is profoundly gendered, and the ideology of breadwinning remains key to the reproduction of masculine privilege. In this paper we adopt an intersectional approach to consider how the relationship between paid work and mental health disability is gendered. We draw on arts-informed, qualitative research with 18 participants to examine how masculine norms and practices in relation to paid work shape men’s experience of mental health disability. Our analysis highlights the varied ways in which participants embrace, rework or reject the gendered imperative to labour.