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Abstract
Recent years have seen profound changes to popular understanding of mental health. New discourses emphasize the need to seek support for one's interior struggles, casting "mental health" as a discrete thing which "everyone has." Concurrent with this less pathological conception of the psyche has been a shift towards computerized therapy programs which blur the line between lifestyle adjustment and medical intervention. I conceive of these new digitally mediated programs, which obscure or altogether replace the human therapist, as "therapy without therapists." This ethnography considers the deployment of these e-mental health programs across a variety of contexts in Australia, where they enjoy public funding as part of a broad government campaign to promote mental wellness at the population level. I show that behind these e-mental health programs are real human beings subject to material social conditions and to the powerful forces which reside in the psyche. This dissertation argues for a new approach to the changing politics of mental health, one which is attentive to both realities.
