Joanne McCuaig, University of Birmingham
Areas of interest: Public usage of mental health concepts, wellbeing, and environmental communication
What I’m working on right now: I’m interested in how the public understand and use information presented by expert sources. I’m investigating how people have used the concept of trauma and how this has changed over selected timeframes. My PhD is a diachronic linguistic analysis of public uses of trauma. The data is 526 language samples from US News media, UK Politicians, and social media posts from Reddit, from 2012, 2016, and 2020. This work contributes to mental health literacy suggestions about trauma and mental health in general, using the theoretical framework of Positive Discourse Analysis.
Where you can find me next: The BAAL Health and Communication SIG, 2025 Workshop series: Inequalities, inclusion and innovation, Tuesday, March 25th, 2025 :
Potential for collaboration: I would be interested in speaking to other scholars working on public usage / uptake of mental health concepts.
Contact: J.McCuaig@bham.ac.uk