Disassembling University Mental Health: Actor–Network Theory as an Analytical Framework

Abstract

University mental health has been predominantly addressed through clinical-epidemiological and institutional approaches which, although effective in estimating the magnitude of student distress, tend to privilege explanations focused on individual symptoms or on tensions between subjects and pre-existing educational structures. This article aims to propose Actor–Network Theory (ANT) as a relevant analytical framework for the study of mental health in higher education, shifting attention toward the sociotechnical networks that shape contemporary university experience. Drawing on a critical review of the literature and on key ANT concepts—distributed agency, heterogeneous networks, translation, and assemblage—the article argues that university mental health can be understood as an emergent phenomenon co-produced by human and non-human actors, including students, pedagogical practices, institutional policies, digital platforms, management protocols, and educational spaces. The main contribution of this work lies in repositioning university mental health as an object of inquiry within the field of education, understood not as an individual problem nor solely as a structural issue, but as a relational outcome of networks that organize academic life and orient institutional responses.