Dipartimento di Sociologia

It is hard to deny that contemporary society is becoming increasingly medicalized. Mental health is likely the most medicalized sphere. The pathologization of emotions is entangled with the rise of a therapeutic culture. This article proposes the hypothesis that apps used to self-track different aspects of mental health and wellbeing represent a peculiar kind of pedagogical tool and a new engine of medicalization. The “quantified self” acts on reality with the conviction that a data-driven life can enhance one’s health status. The mechanisms that foster this attitude are gamification and quantification – two central features of mental health apps. We seek to demonstrate this through a content analysis of six of the most downloaded mental health apps focused on two different kinds of texts: the description provided by the app itself and the reviews written by its users. Our investigation reveals that these types of apps are giving rise to an idea of the subject which is separated from social factors. This de-policitization of health brought about by the apps strengthens the neoliberal idea of health as an individual responsibility, marginalizing any discourse on social justice. Therefore, this kind of health education appears at best ambiguous, if not controversial.

In this paper, we offer a new conceptual approach to analyzing the interrelations between formal and informal pedagogical sites for learning about youth mental (ill) health with a specific focus on digital health technologies. Our approach builds on an understanding of public pedagogy to examine the pedagogical modes of address (Ellsworth 1997) that are (i) produced through 'expert' discourses of mental health literacy for young people; and (ii) include digital practices created by young people as they seek to publicly address mental ill health through social media platforms. We trace the pedagogic modes of address that are evident in examples of digital mental health practices and the creation of what we call therapeutic publics. Through an analysis of mental health apps, we examine how these modes of address are implicated in the affective process of learning about mental (ill) health, and the affective arrangements through which embodied distress is rendered culturally intelligible. In doing so, we situate the use of individual mental health apps within a broader digital ecology that is mediated by therapeutic expertise and offer original contributions to the theorization of public pedagogy.