Between medicalisation and normalisation: Antithetical representations of depression in the Greek-Cypriot press in times of financial crisis:

Media offer people ways of understanding mental health and illness, shaping their attitudes and behaviour towards it. Yet, the literature on media representations of depression is limited and fails to illuminate sufficiently the content of representations. In times of financial crisis, the prevalence of depression is increased and the particular meanings associated with depression are widely diffused. To unpack these meanings, we focused on the Greek-Cypriot press during the financial crisis of 2013. Two-hundred and three articles from seven widely circulating newspapers were thematically analysed. Two antithetical themes of representations of depression were identified: Biomedical Depression, which constructed depression as a biologically grounded illness treated through medical/pharmaceutical means, and Everyday Depression, which portrayed depression as something normal, encountered in anyone, attributed to psychosocial factors (e.g. the financial crisis), and treated through self-management. Biomedical...