[Commlist] Conference: Young people, social media and new understandings of mental health

Colleagues, students and others may be interested in this forthcoming 
landmark conference, organised by Rosalind Gill (Goldsmiths) and Sarah 
Riley (Massey University), and funded by the British Academy and 
Wellcome Trust. It will explore new ways of understanding and 
representing mental health and psychological distress,  particularly 
those generated and circulated on social media.

Social media are giving rise to new understandings of mental health. 
These circulate  via mental health influencers, users with new 
vernaculars ( e.g. ‘menty b’, ‘grippy socks vacation’) and new practices 
of representation (e.g. the ‘crying selfie’) as well as  hashtags such 
as #MentalHealth or #SocialAnxiety with billions of posts.


Setting a new  research agenda, this interdisciplinary  two-day 
conference brings together an exceptional group of scholars, social 
media platform-based researchers, and mental health activists, mental 
health service users and NGOs to discuss:

What are the new ways  psychological distress and mental health are 
being understood?

How are these new understandings situated in relation to critiques of 
medicalisation and the ‘psy complex’?

Are they helping to de-stigmatise mental ill-health or are they 
cementing attachments to labels and diagnosis?

How- if at all- do they connect with or diverge from ‘expert’ discourses?

  How might they reinforce or challenge inequalities related to race, 
gender, class and disability?

How are young people using digital culture to understand and manage 
mental health conditions?

And how might all this connect to wider concerns about a mental health 
crisis among young people?

The conference will take place on July 9th and 10th at the British 
Academy in central London- and is a hybrid event. For more information 
or to register for this event

https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/british-academy-conferences/young-people-social-media/ 

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