Our Mental Health, Their Mental Illness: Blurry Boundaries in the Twenty-First Century

forthcoming April 2027 with Princeton University Press

In stark contrast to even the recent past, mental health is now discussed openly in the news and on social media; it has become central to daily life in the 21st century. But the cultural embrace of mental health is more complex than it seems. Our Mental Health, Their Mental Illness traces how mental health and illness became widely shared cultural ideas, extending far beyond their medical roots with consequences for social stratification. Using computational and qualitative text analysis of two sources of cultural representations—major U.S. newspapers from 1980 to 2020 and the social media platform Reddit from 2019 to 2023—the book examines how the American public understands mental health and mental illness as two sides of a social, not just medical, boundary. As certain experiences like mental health “struggles,” “challenges,” or “crises” become more widely discussed, this boundary has blurred such that individuals can both struggle with their mental health and be considered “normal.” At the same time, the language of mental illness is deployed by an array of cultural actors to create social distance from others who they perceive as abnormal or even dangerous. Despite open discussion of mental health, mental illness remains relegated to a stigmatized category of abnormality and pathology. The book’s novel attention to shared cultural understandings of mental health, mental illness, and the distinction between them illuminates how these concepts operate as a means of social boundary maintenance. As a result, the 21st century focus on mental health has not been one of universal acceptance; rather, the expansion of mental health language contributes to social division.

You can read more on Princeton University Press’s website, and request to be notified about pre-orders, here

You can read an article about my project here.