‘Feel like going crazy’: Mental health discourses in an online support group for mothers during COVID-19
Abstract
COVID-19 has become a mental health pandemic. The impact on vulnerable demographic groups has been particularly severe. This paper focuses on women in employment in Hong Kong who have had to balance remote work and online schooling for over 2 years. Using semi-ethnography and theme-oriented discourse analysis, we examine 200 threads that concern members’ mental health on a popular Facebook support group for mothers. We demonstrate that mental health messages are typically framed as ‘troubles talk’. Other support group members actively align with a trouble-teller through ‘caring responses’, namely expressions of empathy and sympathy. These are realized through assessments of the trouble-teller’s experience, reports of similar experiences; expressions of compassion and advice-giving. Mental health talk online is heavily mitigated, nevertheless the medium provides a space for expressing mental health troubles and providing informal psychosocial support. We advocate the importance of microanalytic discourse studies for mental health research to get insights into people’s lived experiences during the pandemic.
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Biographies
Olga A Zayts-Spence is an Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong. She directs the Research and Impact Initiative on Communication in Healthcare (www.hkuriich.org). She is the author of Language and Culture at Work (with S. Schnurr) and has published widely on various aspects of healthcare communication in Asia.
Vincent Wai Sum Tse is pursuing his PhD at Monash University (Australia). He is also a member of the Research and Impact Initiative on Communication in Healthcare at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests lie in critical discourse studies and institutional communication (especially in education and healthcare).
Zoe Fortune is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. She has a background in Psychology and received her PhD in Health Services Research from the Health Services & Population Research Department at King’s College London. Her research focuses on workplace mental health.
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Article first published online: September 22, 2022
Issue published: March 2023
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