Discourses of mental health and stigma in a changing world: Sociolinguistic perspectives

Abstract

For the last two years, we have lived in a rapidly changing world because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Alongside the spread of the disease, we have also endured a “parallel pandemic” of poor mental health. Widespread adverse mental health is a pertinent sociocultural concern in offline and online contexts, evidenced by the growing literature exploring strategies to bring awareness to and destigmatize mental health (e.g., Chan et al., 2017; Sindoni, 2020) This panel takes this parallel pandemic as its impetus, while also moving beyond the context of COVID-19. We investigate discourses of mental health and stigma from a sociolinguistic perspective. Our panel includes papers addressing how mental health and stigma are negotiated in communicative channels and spaces—online (e.g., social media and online stock images) and offline (e.g., end-of-life care and mental health worker training). Drawing on a range of methodological approaches (e.g., discourse analysis, narrative inquiry, and corpus linguistics) and empirical data from different global healthcare contexts, contributors will present their analyses and metareflections on how conceptions of mental health are maintained, reproduced, and challenged through language. Contributors will also highlight the challenges and the opportunities of conducting research on mental health discourses. Our panel is an act of de-stigmatization itself, as a venue to ‘hear the voices’ of those experiencing adverse mental health through examining their stories. The panel contributes to a move beyond a simple ‘deficit’ focus on mental health discourses to also address how resilience and destigmatization are achieved. Furthermore, the panel will consider strategies for how support can best be fostered for those with adverse mental health in offline and online contexts. Finally, our panel will explore the cultural tensions present in discourses about mental health and stigma.