Leisure in creative media for mental health equity: A conceptual framework via Adorno, Horkheimer, and Debord

This paper conceptualizes the role of media theories in optimizing mental health, with specific focus on emotional wellbeing in association with social justice outcomes affecting marginalized groups. Drawing on cultural studies and the concept of spectacle, opportunities to optimize mental health may emerge through acknowledging existing bodies of scholarship on negative media-related impacts. Theoretical analyses highlight dialectical tensions through which creative media may facilitate self-expression, community-building, and emotional respite – but simultaneously impact mental wellbeing via isolation or reduced human connections. Key opportunities to promote mental health may exist in terms of safeguarding marginalized voices from silencing in the field of creative production, as well as optimizing equitable access to creative media through intervening against the digital divide. Existing theories of creative media highlight intersections with marginalization arising from race, gender, socioeconomic class, Indigenous ancestry, or disability; in response, opportunities to advance equity in mental-health are conceptualized in a preliminary framework.