Multi-sited therapeutic assemblages: Virtual and real-life emplacement of youth mental health support

Abstract

This paper draws together work on therapeutic assemblages, geographic assemblages, and therapeutic landscapes to develop the concept of “multi-sited therapeutic assemblages.” Assemblage theory has been productively used in health research since it achieved prominence in the social sciences two decades ago. One facet that, however, remains as yet under-developed in the literature on “therapeutic assemblages” (as well as their close kin, “health assemblages,” “ill-health assemblages,” “care assemblages,” etc.) is that of the multi-sited therapeutic assemblage. This paper demonstrates the significance of the multi-locality of therapeutic assemblages by mapping the mental health support activities of young New Zealanders. Grounded theory analysis of interviews with 150 New Zealand youth (which took place from 2015 to 2020) about their online and offline engagements in mental health support highlights the importance of the emplacement of therapeutic practices whilst also foregrounding their multi-sitedness. It enables opportunities to examine how therapeutically-meaningful places can be constituted both as independent sites and simultaneously re-made through their fluid, dynamic and temporal relations with one another. Through this analytic perspective, care and other elements of the therapeutic come to be understood as neither anchored to a single site nor constituted through the inter-relation of home and clinic, but defined via a shifting, dynamic, and multi-directional assemblage of multiple places, people, and resources. This has noteworthy implications for how we envisage relationships between a wide variety of therapeutic digital and real-life sites, as well as for examining scholarly and practical understandings of the emplacement of care.