Based on 50 in-depth interviews, this article considers how caregivers to a spouse, parent, child, or sibling suffering from depression, manic-depression, or schizophrenia manage their emotions overtime. By considering the turning points in the joint career of caregivers and ill family members, our analysis moves beyond studies that link emotions to particular incidences, momentary encounters, or discreet events. Four interpretive junctures in the caregiver-patient relationship are identified. Before diagnosis, respondents experience emotional anomie. Diagnosis provides a medical frame that provokes feelings of hope, compassion, and sympathy. Realization that mental illness may be a permanent condition ushers in the more negative emotions of anger and resentment. Caregivers' eventual recognition that they cannot control their family member's illness allows them to decrease involvement without guilt. The article concludes with a call for research that understands that emotions in groups, settings, or organizations are linked to their distinctive histories.
This article reports on an in-depth interview investigation of 2O persons who have been diagnosed and treated for unipolar depression. The article proceeds from the observation that although a great deal of survey research has been directed at trying to understand the causes for depression, very little writing has explored the subjective experience of depression. The depression experience is conceived as a moving perspective or career through which persons try to make sense of their inherently ambiguous life condition. Analysis focuses on the major benchmarks in this career process. The key points in the career process are (a) having inchoate feelings of distress, (b) coming to feel that something is "really wrong," (c) having a crisis, (d) coming to grips with an illness identity, and sometimes (e) defining depression as a condition one can get past. Each of these stages corresponds to transformations in persons' self-conceptions.
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