Metaphors of Depression. Studying First Person Accounts of Life with Depression Published in Blogs

Abstract

This work analyzes the conceptual metaphors of depression in a corpus of 23 blogs written in Catalan by people suffering major depressive disorder. Its main aim was comparative, in order to check whether metaphors detected in previous studies were also used in a new genre and a new language. Their use was confirmed, thus reinforcing the metaphors' relevance and their conceptual (i.e. non language-dependent) nature. Furthermore, the study broadens the scope of the conceptualization of life with depression with a set of metaphors not attested before, mostly related to social, communicative and medical factors. The results suggest that the containment and constraint that characterize a crucial part of the metaphorical discourse of depression are not only imposed by the disorder itself, but also by contextual factors (such as stigma, lack of communication, or the medical practice perceived as a repressive power) that can have a significant impact on the lives people with depression lead. They also suggest that the very nature of blogging as a genre allows these people to provide more accurate depictions of their condition, thus providing a more comprehensive account of metaphors of life with depression and potentially empowering them.

Digging Down or Scratching the Surface: How Patients Use Metaphors to Describe their Experiences of Psychotherapy

“…We nd that our patients use the same conceptual metaphors that are found by other researchers in other countries (10). This supports the idea that conceptual metaphors can cross barriers of culture and language.…”

“…present a summary of the main English language studies that explore the most used conceptual metaphors describing the experience of suffering from depression (10). They nd that conceptual metaphors of darkness, burden, descent, bounded space, journey and enemy are among the most common.…”

Digging down or scratching the surface: how patients use metaphors to describe their experiences of psychotherapy

“…The use of metaphors in therapy is a topic that has been addressed in psychodynamic therapy, cognitive therapy, narrative therapy, trauma therapy and many other therapeutic approaches [5][6][7][8][9]. Coll-Florit et al present a summary of the main English language studies that explore the most used conceptual metaphors describing the experience of suffering from depression [10]. They find that conceptual metaphors of darkness, burden, descent, bounded space, journey and enemy are among the most common.…”

Metaphors of mental illness: a corpus-based approach analysing first-person accounts of patients and mental health professionals

“…This metaphor was described by Lakoff & Johnson (1999: 276) as "the scattered self metaphor". The experiencer as a fragmented entity has been related to depression (Demjén, 2011;Coll-Florit et al, 2021) and schizophrenia . It has also been studied in non-clinical contexts (e.g.…”

“…Numerous studies have analysed the use of CMs in the discourse of physical illnesses, above all cancer (Gibbs & Franks, 2002;Gustafsson et al, 2020;Hommerberg et al, 2020;Magaña & Matlock, 2018;Navarro i Ferrando, 2017, 2021Reisfield & Wilson, 2004;Semino et al, 2017Semino et al, , 2018, and other conditions such as stroke (Boylstein et al, 2007) and diabetes (Goering, 2015). However, less attention has been paid to CMs in the field of mental health, especially with regard to the analysis of discourses published on the internet.…”