Mental health problems among teenagers and young adults have attracted an increasing interest in West media, among scholars and health care workers. Scholars like Frank Furedi (2004) argue that Western societies have developed an emotional therapeutic culture. This paper will take a closer look in how experiences of mental distress are communicated from an inside perspective. Saraphine Stainer’s YouTube video How Depression Effects Someone's Daily Life by (2015)[1] is used as a case in point in an analysis. Theoretically the examination is foundation on the concept that illness and diseases are constructed in a cultural content, at least the expression of them. In this case it means that depression must be communicated in a culturally recognisable way by the distressed, if not this is done the individual runs a risk of not achieving attendance and care according to its needs. Stainer’s video is an example of an online culture where personal experiences is mediated and communicated on a world wide scale. This kind of pathographic storytelling (Hawkins 1999) often follows certain rules that are constituted by the discourse created by the community, in this case the YouTube forum. To achieve a broader discursive understanding of Stainer’s work the comments on her video will therefore be analysed.

In centre of Steiner’s video is her own body. The video depicts her day from the morning routines and forward in a realistic style that reminds of Danish “dogma” films and New Romanian Cinema. With its self-biographical narrative Steiner provide us with an important example of how affective experiences (Tomkins 1995) are mediated in embodied expressions and digitally transmediated through a video. An analysis of these acts can provide us with a unique situated knowledge of depression

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=203pnN95zHY