Social representations of mental health: A qualitative study

While mental health is a subject area that is discussed by the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry based on science in terms of its content and effects, it also takes the form of a social phenomenon in terms of its discussion and interpretation in society. Understanding the social aspect of society requires examining the everyday language of important issues that come to life in this context and understanding the collective judgments in society by analyzing the factors that form the background of these discourses. For this purpose, in-depth interviews, a qualitative research method, were used to collect data and phenomenological analysis was used to analyze the research findings. By exploring the social representations of mental health, it is aimed to determine which meaning-making processes mental health goes through and which source of information is more dominant in social life. The participant group of this study consisted of 10 individuals from different occupational groups living in different social environments who were thought to have no specialized knowledge about mental health. When the findings obtained from the interviews are analyzed, it is noteworthy that the information originating from psychology, religion and culture is fused in social representations of mental health. This fusion makes itself felt as stigmatization-labeling, associating mental health problems with violence and turning to unscientific treatments in the processes of determining perceptions, attitudes, opinions and approaches towards mental health of individuals who make up the society. The group of participants who do not have specialized knowledge prefer to explain mental health with mixed answers. Similar to the scientific ground, mental health is mostly explained in terms of behaviors and emotions, with its tangibly observable aspects, among the public. As a title that is also found in the scientific context, personal experiences are more effective in the evaluation of normal-abnormal behaviors by the participants. Emotions, on the other hand, are explained within positive and negative extremes. In the change and transformation of mental health knowledge, the family comes to the forefront as the social environment where cultural influence is most intensely observed. As a result, we can talk about a new form of knowledge in which social representations are frequently used in the meaning of mental health as a phenomenon, and in the explanations of mental health, both everyday knowledge and scientific knowledge are common. Keywords: psychological counselling, mental health, insanity, social representation