Conceptual metaphors of depression in thai patients' facebook posts:a corpus-based cognitive linguistics investigation

Abstract

Depressed individuals often use metaphorical expressions to help others understand their experiences. However, research on the conceptual metaphors of depression in the Thai context has been limited. Consequently, this study aimed to investigate conceptual metaphors for depression in the Facebook posts of depressed Thai patients, and find out the most salient conceptual metaphors among them, following the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU), developed by Steen et al. (2010), as well as salience-based metaphor analysis (Kövecses et al., 2015). Moreover, the purposes of this research were to compile and survey metaphorical expressions in terms of empowerment in order to further construct a depression metaphor menu to help empower patients. There were 659 posts published in 2023 (i.e., a corpus of 56,942 words) collected from a Thai Facebook group dedicated to mental illnesses. The findings revealed a total of ten conceptual metaphors manifesting the metaphorical conceptualization of depression. According to the data, three conceptual metaphors were found to be the most salient: (1) DEPRESSION IS AN OPPONENT; (2) DEPRESSION IS A JOURNEY; and (3) DEPRESSION IS A WOUND. These concepts reflect the Thai patients’ attitudes towards their struggle with depression, their perception of depression as a journey, and their awareness of psychological wounds. Fifteen metaphorical expressions related to empowerment were surveyed. Among these, seven were eligible for the depression metaphor menu. This study sheds light on how depressed Thai patients conceptualize depression and helps make the abstract nature of depression more understandable in Thai mental healthcare communication.