Treating negative affects among young people: the emerging technological landscape of therapeutic encounters

This project examines the urgent public concern surrounding young people's mental health. It takes a 'critical-neuro geography' approach (Pykett, 2017), to investigate how the technological promise of neuroscience is advanced through young people's 'therapeutic encounters' with eMental health services and apps that attempt to record, moderate and manage negative affect (depression, anxiety and stress). Mental health apps have emerged as one potential solution particularly suited to young people, but the effect of these technologies remains to be assessed (Lupton, 2012; Fullagar et al., 2017). The research will advance understanding of what kind of mental health services and policies should be the focus of future development for young people aged 16-25 - foregrounding a research agenda which is informed by developments in neuroscience, technology and cultural-geographical accounts of emotional experience.

I will gain practical insight from the frontline of city-based mental health services for young people, undertaking research into young people's relationships with app-based mental health technologies. The research will include the perspectives of young people with lived experience of mental ill-health, and the views of practitioners.

I will conduct textual and discursive analysis of eMental Health and mood monitoring apps/websites based on a critical neuro-geography framework. A relational geographical approach will be developed that foregrounds situated, embodied and emotional experience of young people. The research builds on previous geographical research on mental health and its relevance to the governance of behaviour, practices and spaces (Parr, 1998 ; Wolch and Philo, 2000; Callard 2003), and health geography research on therapeutic landscapes and care (Conradson, 2005). Combining this with perspectives from continental philosophies of the body, feminist science and technology studies, affect theory, and posthumanism (Deleuze, 1988; Braidotti, 2013; Wilson, 2015; Grosz, 2017; Roy, 2018) will enable new insight into the multiple interacting components (mind, body, non-human actors, technologies, environment) involved in shaping life.
I will interview young people (aged 16 to 25) about their practices with eMental health technologies to understand how they use smartphone apps, chatbots, digital games and wearables - designed to support mental health and wellbeing - in their everyday lives. Qualitative interviews will also be carried out with community-based mental health practitioners on their evaluation of young people's use of eMental health apps. Interviews with stakeholders in digital mental health, such as researchers, developers and policymakers will inform understanding of the current and future priorities and capacities of digital mental health technologies for young people.

The project will explore how eMental Health technologies and apps attempt to treat negative affect across multiple scales, from the molecular (neural) to the body, city and state. Companies and public health providers are developing these services based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Despite its recent prominence as a treatment, critical perspectives on CBT question its long-term efficacy, and there is a need to analyse the impact of this framework from a socio-political and user-based perspective (Burkeman, 2016; Fullagar et al., 2017; Andersson et al., 2018). Drawing on post-structuralist philosophies, such as Deleuze and Guattari's (1987 [1980]; 1994) writings on affect, subjectivity and capture, and Derridean auto-affection (Colebrook, 2013) , I will critically examine relations between app and user, as an example of a therapeutic encounter , which potentially changes processes of thought and subject-formation and encourages new ways of thinking about mental health diagnosis, prevention and treatment.