Social media influencers (SMIs) who publish content on mental health play a vital role in the lives of teenage girls. To examine what kind of mental health advice SMIs give, we interviewed teenage girls and identified SMIs that regularly post content on mental health. The indexing of their YouTube videos (n=234) shows that the advice includes calls to self-improvement; work on the body; and seeking help. Our analysis demonstrates that working strategically to uphold their fame, the SMIs balance the roles of expert and friend; turn consumption into mental health advice; and gain legitimacy via collaborations with health organisations. The logic specific to social media requires an additional layer in the interpretation of mental health content in SMI videos. While reciprocity and support between SMI and follower are enabled, the inclusion of such content is also strategically beneficial for the SMI as it contributes to increase her perceived authenticity.

When social media influencers (SMIs) describe their experiences of mental health problems, they contribute to the circulation of representations of mental health. The aim of this article is to analyse the ways of talking about mental health problems that are made accessible to a wider audience through the YouTube videos published by four Swedish female SMIs. Our analysis shows that much content related to mental health contains traces of, and contributes to discourses informed by, positive psychology. Mostly, mental health problems are represented as manageable, if only the individual assumes responsibility for her mental wellbeing, but a few videos also contain displays of negativity and resignation. In addition to avoiding association with the unattractiveness associated with negativity, the four SMIs navigate expectations placed on them to encourage confidence and self-love while at the same time expressing modesty. The result is representations of mental health that are multi-layered and complex.

I denna artikel undersöks hur tonårstjejer diskuterar representationer av ångest i en Youtube-video där en svensk influencer bemöter kritik hon har fått för att överanvända ordet ångest. För studien intervjuades 38 tjejer vid tre olika gymnasieskolor i en mellanstor svensk stad. Analysen visar att tjejerna till stor del tar influencerns parti genom att betona hennes rätt att själv definiera och etikettera sitt mående. De beskriver också betydelsen av att hon lyckas övertyga sina följare om att hon faktiskt lider av ångest för att inte hennes autenticitet ska bli ifrågasatt. De tydliga ställningstagandena för influencern måste förstås i relation till en social och kulturell kontext, där det kan vara känsligt att ifrågasätta någon annans representation av sina upplevda psykiska besvär som sjukdom. Respekten för influencerns etikettering av sina känslor som ångest kan därför tolkas som en viktig del av tjejernas självpresentation i intervjusituationen. På samma gång är tjejernas förhållningssätt gentemot influencerns video både del av, och bidrar till, en hälsodiskurs som förlägger såväl ansvaret för det egna måendet och rätten att definiera det hos individen.

This article examines how teenage girls discuss representations of anxiety in a YouTube video in which a Swedish social media influencer responds to accusations that she inaccurately uses the word anxiety to describe her feelings. For the study, 38 girls in three different upper secondary schools in a midsized city in Sweden were interviewed. The analysis shows that the girls support the influencer by claiming her right to label the way she feels without being questioned. Furthermore, they defend the influencer’s determination by explaining that it is vital for her to convince her followers that she indeed suffers from anxiety to maintain her perceived authenticity. The girls’ support for the influencer must be viewed in light of a social and cultural context, in which it appears to be controversial to question someone else’s representation of themselves as sick. Therefore, we must consider interpreting the respect that is shown the influencer’s labelling of her feelings as anxiety as part of the girls’ self-presentations in the context of the interview. The girls’ reactions to the influencer’s video reflect and contribute to a dominant health discourse, which emphasizes individual responsibility for one’s well-being as well as the individual’s right to define and label it.

Parents of a child with chronic kidney disease (CKD) must safely perform advanced care and treatment while at the same time allowing the child some freedom and maintaining everyday parenting and family tasks. Drawing on interviews with primary caregivers of children with CKD in Portugal, we examine the context of raising a child with CKD and how the parents practise their parenthood. The study takes inspiration from parenting studies and child studies and explores how good parenthood is constructed. Based on thematic analysis, three core themes emerged: protecting the child, involving the child in their treatment, and transferring responsibility. The transformation of life-limiting circumstances into a life that worked well for both parents and their child represents what we call ‘readiness parenting’. Assessing risks, supporting the child’s autonomy, and relating to social norms required constant vigilance and readjustments as well as negotiations about parental responsibility.

Caring for a child with chronic kidney disease (CKD) requires parents to reorganise mundane routines and develop advanced technical skills. Parents’ strategies used to meet these challenges need greater understanding. This article takes inspiration from phenomenology of practice and material culture studies to analyse interviews with parents in Portugal. It shows that, although home-based care leads to worsened social inequities, parents use the available financial and human resources to manage the situation and create normality. While they experience becoming confined and close relationships are strained, the mundane practices and social relations of care bring hope and meaning to the family.  

Vad får vi egentligen veta när vi genomgår medicinsk screening? Hur upplever vi erbjudandet om testning eller att genomgå screening?

Det är några av frågorna som diskuteras i Screeningens mångsidighet. Texterna utgår från såväl människors erfarenheter av screening som forskning och vetenskapliga diskussioner. Skribenterna gör nedslag kring exempelvis nationella screeningprogram som mammografi och gynekologiskt cellprov, men också screening för prostatacancer, kognitiv svikt och covid–19. Även hälsoenkäter som screeningverktyg och screening av genetiska anlag som kan leda till sjukdom hos barn lyfts fram.

I sina studier belyser författarna existentiella, etiska och socio–kulturella aspekter av olika screeningpraktiker. De visar på utmaningar som oro, osäkerhet, hur risk skapas och vad den gör med en människa. Tankar kring screeningens tidsmässiga perspektiv och den väntan som uppstår blir viktiga.

Författarna är alla verksamma inom medicinsk humaniora som undersöker människors sjukdomserfarenheter och vardagliga möten med medicinska praktiker. I den här boken fokuserar de vad screening gör med oss som individer och vilka utmaningar vårt samhälle ställs inför i det sjukdomsförebyggande arbetet.

MedverkandeMartin GunnarsonBjørn HofmannEricka JohnsonLisa LindénSofia Morberg JämterudMarit SolbjørAnette WickströmKristin Zeiler

The Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) survey contains scales intended to measure life satisfaction, mental health problems, and socioeconomic status. This article takes inspiration from science and technology studies (STS) and analyse the survey as performative. It also examines subjective meaning-making through an analysis of interviews with 15-year-old teenagers. It shows how the survey enacts the subject position of an accountable teenager and how teenagers experience the survey as sending a message about how one should live. While some teenagers experience this as positive, others narrate feelings of shame. This could be interpreted as a way for them to be accountable for themselves.

In this article, I discuss collaboration and my experiences of involving orthodontists when representing orthodontic practice. Drawing on an ethnographic study with children and young people getting fixed appliances, the aim is to understand the politics of the practitioners’ receptions of the research result. First, I explore the power balance involved in researching expertise in general. Studying up and down and sideways in a multidirectional collaboration, I demonstrate that direct focus on the practitioners’ reactions to the ethnographic representations can reveal the political and social processes in institutions that deeply affect the lives of children. Secondly, the ethnographic examples show the specific changing conditions within the field of orthodontics that influenced how my analysis was received by the orthodontists. I argue that the result of collaboration, in the form of both agreement and friction, serves as knowledge about the burning questions of the institutional network under study.