Depression has been the subject of increased awareness and concern in Australia, but there has been little research into how depression is constructed on mental health websites, which have become a major resource for mental health information among the general public. In this study, critical discursive psychology was employed to analyse the informational content of eight major Australian mental health websites concerning depression. Four interpretative repertoires were identified – a biomedical, a self-optimization, a normal-natural and a societal-structural repertoire. The biomedical and self-optimization repertoires were the most prevalent, constructing depression as an illness within an individual occurring as a result of a biological or psychological deficit. Whilst previous studies have identified the predominance of a biomedical repertoire of depression on official websites, this study highlights the growing prominence of a self-optimization repertoire alongside the biomedical. Whilst it appeared that the aim of the websites was to challenge stigma and encourage help-seeking, it is argued that this way of understanding depression may have counter-productive effects in that the problem is located within the individual rather than with society, and individuals may be positioned as responsible for managing their own mental health, under the guidance of experts. The implications of understanding depression in this way, and not in alternative ways, are discussed.

In this study, we analysed how the concept of ‘mental health’ was discursively constructed in the news media in Australia during the first year of the COVID‐19 pandemic. An approach informed by critical discursive psychology was employed to analyse a sample of 436 print and online articles published in daily newspapers between January 1 and December 31, 2020. Three main interpretative repertoires were identified in the data. Together, these repertoires functioned to construct mental health as an internal, individual reservoir of positive emotion, which individuals are responsible for building and maintaining. An ideological dilemma was also observed between mental health as an individual responsibility and mental health as a societal responsibility. This study demonstrates that a discourse of individual responsibility for mental health was prevalent in the news media in Australia, even amid the COVID‐19 pandemic, and highlights the need for communications about mental health to be designed in ways that increase understanding of the social determinants of mental health. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

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