Morbid Talk: Emotional Suffering and Local Interaction Order During the Contemporary Youth Mental Health Crisis

Abstract

Although mental health and suicide literatures have established a cultural turn, local group cultures are largely ignored. By examining how several groups of students in a rural high school navigate emotional distress in peer groups, this article reveals the local emotion cultures structured by their own local interaction order. I identify morbid talk in which youth joke about suicide, trauma, and other emotional pain. Engaging in morbid talk temporarily relieves emotional tensions, generates social solidarity, and reproduces group boundaries. A local interaction order involving negative emotions emerges: emotional pain must be expressed as humor, and one must obtain a moral license to do so. My findings thus bring forth the group variations in cultures of emotional distress, contributing to the mental health, negative emotions, and interaction order literatures. I conclude by discussing its implications for future research directions.