Silent Stigma in Depression Communication: Mechanisms Shaping Public Understanding in Chinese and U.S. Media

This study investigates how stigma surrounding depression is subtly produced in news discourse and how such communicative practices frame public representations of mental health. Drawing on a corpus-based discursive news values analysis integrated with multimodal analysis, we examine English-language media coverage of depression in China and the United States. Rather than relying on overtly negative labeling, stigma is enacted through implicit communicative strategies: expert voices dominate while people with lived experience are marginalized, referential patterns repeatedly associate depression with postpartum women and suicide, and visual resources index emotional distance and role-bound femininity. Together, these discursive and visual configurations constitute what we term silent stigma-a mode of meaning-making that constrains interpretive possibilities, structures audience stance, and normalizes limited social representations of depression. Cross-national comparison further reveals culturally patterned strategies. Chinese media tend to externalize depression through foreign exemplars and symbolic imagery, while U.S. media personalize it through maternal identity and individual narratives, reflecting different communicative logics of distancing versus individualization. The findings suggest communicative considerations for mental health reporting, including broadening narrative voices, avoiding narrow demographic framing, and adopting culturally responsive textual and visual strategies. The study thus contributes to health communication scholarship by showing how everyday media practices discursively configure the visibility and legitimacy of depression in public news discourse.