Searching for the Words to Say It: The Importance of Cultural Idioms in the Articulation of the Experience of Mental illness

This article analyzes the role cultural idioms play in the articulation of the experience of mental illness. After a brief survey of the literature concerned with the narrative transformation of experience and its expression in the social realm, this article identifies some of the narrative structures of the illness accounts that were collected for this project. I look, on the one hand, at the various languages used in the articulation of "mental illness" and, on the other hand, at the power relations that are activated through the use of those languages. In so doing, I try to determine to what extent it is possible for a sufferer of "mental illness" to empower him or herself through the narrativization and expression of one's experience of mental health problems.