Try to be healthy, but don't forgo your masculinity: deconstructing men's health discourse in the media

The emergence of discourse around men's health has been evident now for at least 10 years across academic, policy and media texts. However, recent research has begun to question some of the assumptions presented concerning masculinity and men's health, particularly within popular media representations. The present paper builds on previous research by interrogating the construction of men's health presented in a recent special feature of a UK national newspaper (The Observer, November 27, 2005). The dataset was subjected to intensive scrutiny using techniques from discourse analysis. Several inter-related discursive patterns were identified which drew upon essentialist notions of masculinity, unquestioned differences between men and women, and constructions of men as naïve, passive and in need of dedicated help. The implications of such representations for health promotion are discussed.

Locating control: psychology and the cultural production of 'healthy subject positions'

This paper addresses some of the ways in which psychological constructs, which have been traditionally positioned as intra-psychic phenomena, may be more productively understood as local performances of intelligible 'healthy subject positions'. More specifically, it focuses on the cultural location of psychological epistemologies, and the assumptions of universality (based upon the normative subject position 'white middle-class heterosexual male') that shape them. Through an analysis of traditional locus of control research, it explores the ways in which individualistic notions of 'personality traits' enact a form of governmentality over subjects who are expected to inhabit specific, fixed subject positions. Thus, traditional research on locus of control can be seen as instantiating the very subject positions that it seeks to measure. To counter this, the paper draws upon experience as a methodological tool in order to examine some of the ways in which neo-liberal discourses of control work to homogenize the broad range of experiences that construct intelligible subject positions. In particular, the focus is on the potentialities and limitations of drawing on such discourses of control to understand non-heterosexual experiences, and it is suggested that we need to examine how such experiences may render individuals complicit with heterosexist 'practices of self'.

To have or to take: discourse, positioning, and narrative identity in women's accounts of HRT

Using 'social cognitive' frameworks, attitudes to HRT have been examined as if they were stable entities located within individuals. However, qualitative studies have revealed variations and contradictions in women's 'attitudes'. We seek to explain these apparent contradictions by using a social constructionist approach to the analysis of qualitative data from 7 focus group discussions about HRT with 48 women in New Zealand. A discourse analysis of 'interpretative repertoires', subject positions and narrative identity was undertaken to explain the construction of HRT in situated practice, and the negotiation and accomplishment of a unitary orientation to HRT across situations. The results summarize the interpretative repertoires used by the women, and one example of a subject position negotiated at a moment of patently problematic intersecting interpretative repertoires, to highlight the construction of subject positions using discursive resources. The importance of the study of subjectivity in applied areas of psychology is discussed.

Problematising depression: young people, mental health and suicidal behaviours

The published literature provides strong evidence for connections between mental health issues, such as depression, and suicidal behaviours. However, in spite of this, no investigations to date have explored young people's perceptions of the interconnections between depression, and suicidal behaviours. This article presents discussive analyses of discussions of the contributions of depression to their suicidal behaviours of young people in New Zealand. Two dominant discourses of depression emerged: a medicalised discourse, and a moral discourse. The medicalised discourse was accessible to the majority of participants, and constructed depression as a disease. This discourse prioritised the voices of health professionals and suggested that depression was difficult to resist. The moral discourse was an alternative to the medicalised discourse, and constructed young people who experienced depression and suicidal behaviours as failures. Both discourses were informed by a mechanistic cause-and-effect relationship between depression and suicidal behaviours: attempting suicide was seen as an inevitable outcome of experiencing depression, and suicidal behaviours were inevitably undertaken by young people who were depressed. Resistance to either of these dominant discourses was problematic, and was best articulated during discussions of the stigma associated with mental ill-health and depression.