[14] Poster presentation

[14-1] Metaphors of mental health: A research project on how sufferers and professionals talk about severe mental illness

*Marta Coll-Florit¹, Salvador Climent¹, Martín Correa-Urquiza³, Eulàlia Hernández², Antoni Oliver¹, Asun Pié² (1. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya UOC, Arts and Humanities(Spain), 2. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya UOC, Psychology and Education Sciences(Spain), 3. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Anthropology - Philosophy and Social Work(Spain))

Presentation language：English

In Cognitive Linguistics, Conceptual Metaphor is understood both as a mechanism for the conceptualization of experiences and as a method for analyzing people's discourse. Multiple studies at the intersection of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Health Studies have revealed that metaphors can play an important role in the analysis of sufferers' emotions, in public communication, and in psychotherapeutic treatment in the case of mental illness.

In this framework, we present the MOMENT Project (Metaphors of Mental Health; FFI2017-86969-R REA/ERDF, EU), a large effort to study the metaphors produced in the internet (blogs, twitter) by patients of severe mental illness and health care professionals. Texts in Spanish (approximately one million words) are analysed for four groups of patients (schizophrenia, depression, OCD and bipolar disorder) and professionals (psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and social educators), in order to detect the most relevant metaphors issued by each group and compare the discourses.

Metaphors have been classified into three broad domains: sufferer’s life, social environment and medical practice. We will present the most important frames detected in the study, highlighting those that can contribute to sufferer empowerment. As a result of the project, an online repertoire of metaphors detected in the discourses will be publicly available.

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