ABSTRACT
This chapter pursues a line of critical questioning concerning how we come to 'know' the embodied, discursive and biopolitical dimensions of mental health and illness in the context of physical cultures. It considers how the 'physical' within physical cultural studies (PCS) has been theorized with respect to questions of mental (ill) health in the context of an historical dualism of mind and body. The chapter explores how the broader cultural, economic and political context of the United Kingdom (UK) has positioned mind–body relations within mental health policy, research, advocacy and practice. The commonplace to read that 'exercise is medicine', and, the chapter argues that active embodiment has been subsumed within a new corporeal therapeutics aimed at ameliorating mental (ill) health. In the context of mental health, the phenomenon of lifestyle drift is also shaped by the contemporary intersection of two forms of expertise – exercise science and neuroscience.
