POVERTY affects people’s mental health and tackling one will help improve the other according to a best-selling author.

Professor Kate Pickett is speaking at the annual Challenge Poverty lecture at Glasgow Caledonian University tonight to open Challenge Poverty Week.

Over the next seven days campaigners will highlight the scale of poverty in Scotland and challenge government and others to take the necessary action to reduce and eradicate it.

Prof Pickett said that inequality is expected to increase not just in Glasgow but across the UK in the next ten years.

Studies have shown children living in poverty are more likely to have a disagosable mental health problem than those in more affluent circumstances.

A national statistics study found in families with neither parent working 20% had suffered a mental health condition compared to 8% in families in which both parents work.

Prof Picket said: “We’ve known for some time that more unequal societies suffer from a host of social ills including higher rates of crime and poor health, and that this affects the whole of society, not just those living in poverty.

“But what is less discussed is how inequality gets into our heads to affect our thoughts and feelings, our ideas of success and failure, our relationships with each other, and the stress and mental illness suffered by so many of us. There is a deep psychology of inequality that we need to understand if humanity is to flourish.”

Poverty Alliance co-ordinates Challenge Poverty Week. Peter Kelly, Director, said: “In our society we believe in doing the right thing. And yet, we’re letting increasing numbers of people get swept up in the rising tide of poverty.

“All across Scotland people from all walks of life are coming together to highlight the problem and show what they are doing to help overcome the barriers that lock so many of us in poverty.

“Poverty restricts people’s ability to take part in society, but by boosting people’s incomes and reducing the cost of living we can redesign our economy to better reflect the values of compassion and justice we all share.”

Political leaders, churches, third sector and community groups will take part in around 100 events to highlight poverty and propose solutions like increasing child benefit.