Amy L. Johnson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, was awarded in May 2025 a prestigious Paul J. Franz, Jr Fellowship research award. Dr. Johnson’s research examines how the 21st century focus on mental health has contributed to social division rather than universal acceptance. The endowment grant will support her book project, tentatively titled Our Mental Health, Their Mental Illness.
Her research traces how mental health and illness became widely shared cultural ideas, extending far beyond their medical roots with consequences for social stratification. Using computational and qualitative text analysis of two sources of cultural representations—major American newspapers from 1980 to 2020 and the social media platform Reddit from 2019 to 2023—the book examines how the American public understands mental health and mental illness as two sides of a social, not just medical, boundary.