Discourse And Mental Health

Situated at the interface of corpus linguistics and health communication, Corpus, Discourse and Mental Health provides insights into the linguistic practices of members of three online support communities as they describe their experiences of living with and managing different mental health problems, including anorexia nervosa, depression and diabulimia. In examining contemporary health communication data, the book combines quantitative corpus linguistic methods with qualitative discourse analysis that draws upon recent theoretical insights from critical health sociology. Using this mixed-methods approach, the analysis identifies patterns and consistencies in the language used by people experiencing psychological distress and their role in realising varying representations of mental illness, diagnosis and treatment. Far from being neutral accounts of suffering and treating illness, corpus analysis illustrates that these interactions are suffused with moral and ideological tensions sufferers seek to collectively negotiate responsibility for the onset and treatment of recalcitrant mental health problems. Integrating corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis and health sociology, this book showcases the capacity of linguistic analysis for understanding mental health discourse as well as critically exploring the potential of corpus linguistics to offer an evidence-based approach to health communication research.

This book is the result of years of fieldwork at a public hospital located in an immigrant neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It focuses on the relationships between diversity and inequality in access to mental healthcare through the discourse practices, tactics and strategies deployed by patients with widely varying cultural, linguistic and social backgrounds. As an action-research process, it helped change communicative practices at the Hospital’s outpatient mental healthcare service. The book focuses on the entire process and its outcomes, arguing in favor of a critical, situated perspective on discourse analysis, theoretically and practically oriented to social change. It also proposes a different approach to doctor-patient communication, usually conducted from an ethnocentric perspective which does not take into account cultural, social and economic diversity. It reviews many topics that are somehow classical in doctor-patient communication analysis, but from a different point of view: issues such as the sequential organization of primary care encounters, diagnostic formulations, asymmetry and accommodation, etc., are now examined from a locally grounded ethnographic perspective. This change is not only theoretical but also political, as it helps understand patient practices of resistance, identity-making and solidarity in contexts of inequality.

This book addresses the premise that therapy can be understood, practiced, and researched as a discursive activity. Using varied forms of discourse analysis, it examines the cultural, institutional, and face-to-face communications that shape, and occur within, therapies that are discursively understood and practiced. By first providing an overview of commonalities across discursive therapies and research approaches, the authors discursively examine general aspects of therapy. Topics explored include subjectivity, psychological terms, institutional influences, therapeutic relationships, therapists’ ways of talking and questioning, discursive ethics, and assessment of therapeutic processes and outcomes. This book offers a macro-analysis of the conversational practices of a discursively informed approach to therapy; as well as a micro-analysis of the ways in which language shapes and is used in a discursively informed approach to therapy. This book will interest practitioners seeking to better understand therapy as a discursive process, and discourse analysts wanting to understand therapy as discursive therapists might practice it.

**Shortlisted for the 2021 BAAL Book Prize for an outstanding book in the field of Applied Linguistics** Situated at the interface of corpus linguistics and health communication, Corpus, Discourse and Mental Health provides insights into the linguistic practices of members of three online support communities as they describe their experiences of living with and managing different mental health problems, including anorexia nervosa, depression and diabulimia. In examining contemporary health communication data, the book combines quantitative corpus linguistic methods with qualitative discourse analysis that draws upon recent theoretical insights from critical health sociology. Using this mixed-methods approach, the analysis identifies patterns and consistencies in the language used by people experiencing psychological distress and their role in realising varying representations of mental illness, diagnosis and treatment. Far from being neutral accounts of suffering and treating illness, corpus analysis illustrates that these interactions are suffused with moral and ideological tensions sufferers seek to collectively negotiate responsibility for the onset and treatment of recalcitrant mental health problems. Integrating corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis and health sociology, this book showcases the capacity of linguistic analysis for understanding mental health discourse as well as critically exploring the potential of corpus linguistics to offer an evidence-based approach to health communication research.

`This is a wonderful volume, powerfully written, timely, insightful, and filled with major pieces; the passion, intellectual rigor and sense of history found here promises to shape this field in the decades to come. This volume sets the agenda for the future' - Norman K Denzin, University of Illinois Pathology and the Postmodern explores the relationship between mental distress and social constructionism using new work from eminent scholars in the fields of sociology, psychology and philosophy. The authors address: how specific cultural, economic and historical forces converge in contemporary psychiatry and psychology; how new syndromes, subjectivities and identities are being constructed and

"Situated at the interface of corpus linguistics and health communication, Corpus, Discourse and Mental Health provides insights into the linguistic practices of members of three online support communities as they describe their experiences of living with and managing different mental health problems, including anorexia nervosa, depression and diabulimia. In examining contemporary health communication data, the book combines quantitative corpus linguistic methods with qualitative discourse analysis that draws upon recent theoretical insights from critical health sociology. Using this mixed-methods approach, the analysis identifies patterns and consistencies in the language used by people experiencing psychological distress and their role in realising varying representations of mental illness, diagnosis and treatment. Far from being neutral accounts of suffering and treating illness, corpus analysis illustrates that these interactions are suffused with moral and ideological tensions sufferers seek to collectively negotiate responsibility for the onset and treatment of recalcitrant mental health problems. Integrating corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis and health sociology, this book showcases the capacity of linguistic analysis for understanding mental health discourse as well as critically exploring the potential of corpus linguistics to offer an evidence-based approach to health communication research"--

Based on latest research in the field, this book links theory and practice with key agendas and policies on behaviour, children’s mental health and well-being. It considers how policy and research influence each other and provides a range of whole-school and individual-teacher actions to support all children, but particularly for those whose behaviour is seen as challenging. Emma Clarke provides guidance on how practitioners can most effectively support children and manage pupils’ behaviour and tracks how theory and policy has had a meaningful impact on what we do in the classroom. The book is divided into three distinct parts, each with its own set of reflective activities and thinking points as well as suggestions for further reading. Chapters in Part I include a focus on what informs the actions taken to support and manage behaviour in the classroom. In Part II, the chapters move on to consider specific approaches and delve into the theories and research which underpin them. Part III shares ethos-focused approaches to supporting behaviour, including the use of philosophical inquiry by Dr Aimee Quickfall, a timely and highly important review of the ‘eternal verities’ by Professor John Visser, and an overview of Finnish perspectives on behaviour in schools, as Finland is often, and rightly, held up as a beacon on good practice. The book presents a range of research, policy and practice and, as such, aims to be of use to a range of readers. It can support and develop practitioners in the classroom, from early career teachers to those with a wealth of experience, as well as senior leaders and those working in wider contexts with children. It will also be useful for students and researchers due to the balance of theory and practice presented.

This Handbook gathers together empirical and theoretical chapters from leading scholars and clinicians to examine the broad issue of adult mental health. The contributors draw upon data from a variety of contexts to illustrate the multiple ways in which language as action can assist us in better understanding the discursive practices that surround adult mental health. Conversation and discourse analysis are useful, related approaches for the study of mental health conditions, particularly when underpinned by a social constructionist framework. In the field of mental health, the use of these two approaches is growing, with emergent implications for adults with mental health conditions, their practitioners, and/or their families. Divided into four parts; Reconceptualising Mental Health and Illness; Naming, Labelling and Diagnosing; The Discursive Practice of Psychiatry; and Therapy and Interventions; this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of current debates regarding adult mental health.