Investigating the effects, and most effective use, of metaphors for depression in mental health support.

My project addresses an institutionally acknowledged need to improve UK mental health support services. Government efforts to improve mental health literacy produced the 'Every Mind Matters' website (2019), but mental health charities still face increasing demand under the "looming mental health crisis" during coronavirus lockdown (rethink.org, 2020). Based on depression and metaphor literature, and guided by trends in corpus data, I will test the extent to which conventional and novel metaphorical framings can conceptualise depression in more nuanced, personalised, and healthy ways to boost recovery rates. Recent collaborative study with a Birmingham sexual health campaign, demonstrated that informed use of figurative language can improve engagement with health-based messages and more effectively encourage people to self-refer to health support services (Perez-Sobrino et al., 2021). Similar collaboration with local mental health support services or charities (e.g. Birmingham Mind) will help these findings to inform metaphor use in both clinical practice and mental health awareness campaigns, whilst also facilitating the analyst-practitioner dialogue needed to improve the effectiveness of mental health metaphor research (Tay, 2020). My aim is not to prescribe or dictate 'optimal' metaphors, but to improve mental health literacy and support by diversifying the metaphor strategies and resources used to communicate and frame depression.

Previous studies have already demonstrated the potential of metaphor in wider health communication. Developing health literacy using tailored metaphors helps patients to understand medical concepts (Talley, 2016), and facilitates greater emotional disclosure and amounts of talk in patient-practitioner interactions (Padfield et al., 2018). For patients, engaging with metaphor helps to convey personal experience with invisible symptoms in more diverse and creative ways, making patients feel better understood (Gameiro et al.,...