Since losing her job, Sandra has been on benefits. She feels her self-esteem has been severely affected by her situation, and says, “What worries me, and scares me sometimes, is that there are so many programmes about benefit cheats and scroungers, and the labelling you get because you are someone on benefits. I think there’s a massive link between poverty, stress, and mental health, and you can’t get away from it. I felt I was relatively safe: I had a mortgage, I had a job, I had a good career. Now I’ve been reduced to a set of labels. The confidence I used to have is gone. What rules most of the time is my electric meter, constantly going, and I worry about how many showers can I have in a week? How much television can I watch?”