Mental coaching through crisis: digital technologies and psychological governance during COVID-19

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over recent decades, psychological health interventions have assumed a more prominent role in the conduct and regulation of daily life. Conceptualised in the critical social sciences as psychological governance, this development entails shaping the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of individuals and populations to promote desired psychological states and conduct. In step with broader sociotechnical shifts, psychological governance is increasingly mobilised through digital technologies, such as smartphone apps. The COVID-19 pandemic marks a pivotal moment in the proliferation of digital mental wellbeing technologies. This paper examines the mental wellbeing app Mentemia, made available to the New Zealand public through government funding in the wake of COVID-19, exploring how Mentemia frames and addresses mental wellbeing in the context of the pandemic. Drawing from thematic analysis of within-app material and news media articles, we illustrate how Mentemia constructs mental wellbeing as a universal, everyday, and individual process and encourages users to engage with psychological intervention as a normalised component of daily life. We find that Mentemia’s approach to framing and addressing mental wellbeing during COVID-19 aligns with prevailing discourses associated with the individualising and emancipatory values of contemporary neoliberalism which, in the context of psychological governance, presents as neuroliberalism. We highlight how Mentemia advances a particular understanding of psychological intervention to help remedy pandemic-related mental ill-health, illustrating the capacity for digital technologies to alter how mental wellbeing is experienced and acted on.