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This study uses multimodal critical discourse analysis to explore the growing market of mental health applications (MHapps), particularly those using sound and music to promote wellbeing. Focusing on NuCalm, Endel and BrainTap, it examines the design and functionalities of their interfaces, revealing the underlying assumptions, values and ideologies embedded in their structures. It finds that these apps are structured around a script of self-management and self-improvement, deeply embedded in an entrepreneurial discourse of self-optimisation. What initially appears as a focus on wellbeing, in fact, subtly pushes users to maximise productivity and competitiveness. The study also reveals paradoxes in presenting both technology and users as the problem and solution to mental health challenges. Overall, it provides new insights into how MHapps shape contemporary understandings of wellbeing, reinforcing neoliberal ideologies of self-care as individual responsibility and raising broader questions about whether these technologies help users or simply redefine personal struggles as failures.
Eriksson et al. (Wed,) studied this question.