"It's important to manage our stress": Mental health advice in the Australian print news media during the COVID-19 pandemic

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dc.contributor.authorHorwood, G.
dc.contributor.authorAugoustinos, M.
dc.contributor.authorDue, C.
dc.date.issued2023
dc.descriptionAvailable online 21 March 2023
dc.description.abstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has heightened existing concerns about mental health and illness in Australia. The news media is an important source of health information, but there has been little research into how advice about mental health is communicated to the public via the news media. In this study, we examined how advice about building and maintaining mental health was discursively constructed in the news media during the COVID-19 pandemic. A discourse analytic approach informed by critical discursive psychology was employed to analyse 436 articles published in daily newspapers in Australia between 1 January and 31 December 2020, which contained references to mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic. Three main interpretative repertoires were identified – negative emotions are a risk to mental health and must be managed; risky emotions should be managed by being controlled (based around a ‘border control’ metaphor); and risky emotions should be managed by being released (based around a ‘pressure cooker’ metaphor). This study demonstrates that, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, advice constructed negative emotions as risky and problematic; and normalized the habitual management of emotions by individuals through strategies of control and release. Potential implications of such discourses for goals of improving population mental health are discussed.
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityGrace Horwood, Martha Augoustinos , Clemence Due
dc.identifier.citationSSM - Mental Health, 2023; 3:100204-1-100204-8
dc.identifier.doi10.1016/j.ssmmh.2023.100204
dc.identifier.issn2666-5603
dc.identifier.issn2666-5603
dc.identifier.orcidHorwood, G. [0000-0001-7918-5092]
dc.identifier.orcidAugoustinos, M. [0000-0002-7212-1499]
dc.identifier.orcidDue, C. [0000-0001-6485-6076]
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/2440/140266
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherElsevier
dc.rights© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync- nd/4.0/).
dc.source.urihttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2023.100204
dc.title"It's important to manage our stress": Mental health advice in the Australian print news media during the COVID-19 pandemic
dc.typeJournal article
pubs.publication-statusPublished

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