“They can’t cope”: Youth Self-injury and Risk Discourse in Canadian News Media

Epidemics of self-injury are increasingly framed as public health crises and risk facing youth in Canada. This article examines the discursive construction of youth self-injury as risk in mainstream Canadian news articles through a neoliberal governmentality framework. It argues that self-injury risk discourses are consistent with neoliberal mental health paradigms, which individualize and depoliticize distress while responsibilizing individuals for recovery and wellbeing. The construction of youth self-injury in terms of risk simultaneously undergirds the surveillance, regulation, and coercive control of self-injuring subjects. Based on a critical discourse analysis of Canadian news articles addressing the problem of youth self-injury, this article identifies and discusses three interrelated themes from study findings: social (media) contagion, failed resilience, and system overwhelm. Ultimately, it suggests that the construction of self-injury in terms of risk frames self-injuring youth as failed neoliberal subjects. Risk discourses are therefore incompatible with social justice paradigms in mental health.