“A Disease Like Any Other”: Awareness-Raising and Neuro-tivization of Depression in Poland

Abstract

This article shows how Forum Against Depression, 1 an online platform devoted to depression, creates awareness about depression in Poland. This qualitative study uses critical discourse analysis to interpret texts published by the Forum and a short film, Disappearing Children, devoted to “teenage depression.” In this discourse, depression is presented as an object, the meaning of which is stable and dispersed. The article shows how the creation of this double semiosis of depression provides an invitation for auto-diagnosis and blurs the identity of the sender: the pharmaceutical company running the campaign, which is the subject of this article. Neuro-tivization of depression conceals the social context of distress and helps maximize drug sales. Ultimately, this article tracks the merging of complex psychiatrization and depsychiatrization processes. The article enhances discussion about issues related to biomedical framings of mental health, diagnostic reification of mental health diagnoses, and debate about conditions in which mental health knowledge is produced in Poland and globally.