Multimodal metaphors in animated depression educational videos on Chinese social media: A critical multimodal discourse analysis

Social media has emerged as an important channel for mental health education, allowing health educators to communicate mental health knowledge to the public via short-form videos. Drawing on critical multimodal discourse analysis, this paper examines the use of multimodal metaphors in animated depression educational videos on the Chinese social media platform Bilibili.com and considers the broader social implications of these metaphors for understanding and managing depression. The findings show that multimodal metaphors are employed to represent the nature of depression, its symptoms, potential causes, and treatments. Conventional metaphors (e.g., Experiencing Depression is Being Engulfed by a Blanket of Darkness) transform mental distress into a visible and embodied presence, thereby validating the sufferers’ illness experiences; creative metaphors (e.g., Depression is the Grim Reaper and Depression is a Black Dog) reframe depression as external agents, while also attributing a certain level of agency to individuals and combating social stigma. Moreover, by personifying brain chemicals and simplifying neurological mechanisms, multimodal biomedical metaphors make complex knowledge more understandable to the audience. While these metaphors play an important role in removing barriers to public understanding, by prioritizing a biomedical account, they also risk dehumanizing and overmedicalizing individuals who are affected by depression. Therefore, we argue that a more balanced approach that incorporates both biomedical and psychosocial aspects of depression is needed for a more holistic and socially oriented mental health education.