Everyday Experiences: Small Stories and Mental Illness on Instagram

Despite historical precedence and modern prevalence, mental illness and associated disorders are frequently aligned with notions of deviance and, by association, abnormality. The view that mental illness deviates from an implicit social norm permeates the CHI community, impacting how scholars approach research in this space. In this paper, we challenge community and societal norms aligning mental illness with deviance. We combine semi-structured interviews with digital ethnography of public Instagram accounts to examine how Instagram users express mental illness. Drawing on small stories research, we find that individuals situate mental illness within their everyday lives and negotiate their tellings of experience due to the influence of various social control structures. We discuss implications for incorporating 'the everyday' into the design of technological solutions for marginalized communities and the ways in which researchers and designers may inadvertently perpetuate and instantiate stigma related to mental illness.