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

我的项目解决了制度上公认的改善英国心理健康支持服务的需要。（rethink.org, 2020）政府努力提高心理健康素养，创建了“每个人都很重要”网站（2019年），但在冠状病毒封锁期间“迫在眉睫的心理健康危机”下，心理健康慈善机构仍然面临越来越多的需求。基于抑郁症和隐喻文献，并以语料库数据趋势为指导，我将测试传统和新颖的隐喻框架在多大程度上能够以更细致、个性化和健康的方式将抑郁症概念化，以提高康复率。最近与伯明翰性健康运动的合作研究表明，在知情的情况下使用比喻性语言可以提高对基于健康的信息的参与，并更有效地鼓励人们自我参考健康支持服务（Perez-Sobrino等人，2021年）。与当地心理健康支持服务机构或慈善机构（例如Birmingham Mind）的类似合作将有助于这些发现为临床实践和心理健康意识运动中的隐喻使用提供信息，同时也促进了提高心理健康隐喻研究有效性所需的分析师-从业者对话（Tay, 2020）。我的目的不是规定或规定“最佳”隐喻，而是通过使用于沟通和框架抑郁症的隐喻策略和资源多样化来提高心理健康素养和支持。先前的研究已经证明了隐喻在更广泛的健康交流中的潜力。使用量身定制的隐喻发展健康素养有助于患者理解医学概念（Talley, 2016），并促进患者与医生互动中更多的情感披露和交谈（Padfield等人，2018）。对于患者来说，使用隐喻有助于以更多样化和创造性的方式传达个人对无形症状的体验，使患者感觉更好地被理解（Gameiro et al., 2018; Semino et al., 2018）。对于专业人士来说，将客户的隐喻与更广泛的生活背景结合起来，有助于理解症状，并深入了解激发他们选择隐喻的情感和背景因素（McMullen, 2008; Talley, 2016; Littlemore and Turner, 2019）。就隐喻资源的现有范围而言，传统抑郁症隐喻的发展历史是有充分记载的（Jadhav, 1996; Conway and McMullen, 2002; Kövecses, 2007）。我将进一步调查技术进步、生物医学方法对医疗保健的主导地位以及Covid-19的影响等因素的影响。除了考虑宏观层面，我还将测试特定隐喻趋势与性别或职业等个体变量之间的相关性（Charteris-Black, 2012; Talley, 2016），以更好地为量身定制的隐喻使用提供信息。

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., 2018; Semino et al., 2018). For professionals, engaging with clients' metaphors alongside broader life context can help with understanding symptoms, and provide insight into the emotional and contextual factors which motivate their choice of metaphor (McMullen, 2008; Talley, 2016; Littlemore and Turner, 2019).As for the existing scope of metaphor resources, the developmental history of conventional depression metaphors is well-documented (Jadhav, 1996; Conway and McMullen, 2002; Kövecses, 2007). I will further this by investigating the influence of such factors as technological advancement, the dominance of a biomedical approach to healthcare, and the impact of Covid-19. As well as considering the macro level, I will test for correlations between specific metaphor trends and individual variables like gender or profession (Charteris-Black, 2012; Talley, 2016) to better inform tailored metaphor use.