Transforming Taboo: Discursive and Generic Uptake in South Asian Mental Health Recovery Narratives

Abstract

The mental health crisis in South Asian communities is blatantly real and needs further study. However, developing a culturally relevant approach requires understanding the lived experiences of members of that culture. The mental health recovery narrative genre provides one record of these lived experiences. Although mental health rhetorical research is growing, there has been little research employing rhetoric to understand the specific ways in which the written form of mental health recovery narratives, and by extension, mental illness experiences, are culturally shaped. Thus, this paper investigates the South Asian mental health crisis by utilizing concepts from Rhetorical Genre Studies to analyze samples of the South Asian mental health recovery narrative genre from the online platform Mann Mukti. This paper interprets rhetorical patterns through the South Asian cultural context and argues that the genre transforms the personal need to be heard empathetically and uninterruptedly into a recurrent and shared social exigence.