"Getting on with life": Women's experiences and ways of coping with depression.

Abstract

This study explored women's experiences of depression, and in particular how women living in rural communities understand, experience, and cope with feelings of distress unaided by professional help. Participants were 15 women living in rural areas of central New Brunswick who completed a semi-structured interview lasting, on average, 75 minutes. The purpose of the interview was to explore their experiences of depression and their ways of coping with these experiences. The women's accounts were analyzed using thematic and discourse analysis methods. A central theme revealed in the analysis was that women's understanding of their experiences was interwoven with their attempts to live up to the ideals and practices of the "good" woman. Within this context, depressive experiences were viewed as a taken-for-granted or expected part of their everyday lives.

Women's Care-Seeking Experiences After Referral for Postpartum Depression

“…McIntosh also found that some health visitors dismissed mothers' feelings of depression as normal and self-limiting. Even when depression is not associated with the postpartum period, women tend to attribute symptoms to external circumstances and stress (Scattolon & Stoppard, 1999) or to personal flaws, such as weakness of character (Wrigley, Jackson, Judd, & Komiti, 2005). Normalizing of symptoms can hinder not only care seeking, but also the reporting of symptoms and diagnosis of depression when individuals do seek professional help (Kessler, Lloyd, Lewis, & Pereira, 1999;Parker & Parker, 2003).…”

The DSM and its lure of legitimacy

“…(Ussher et al, 2007: 154) In being constructed by her partner as ill, this woman's concerns are regarded as only an indication of individual pathology, and the need for change in her life circumstances is negated. A similar danger is apparent in Scattalon and Stoppard's (1999) research of women's experiences of depression. A number of the women with whom they spoke highlighted the crucial role of poverty on their emotional well-being:…”

Leisure Practices as Counter-Depressants: Emotion-Work and Emotion-Play within Women's Recovery from Depression

“…These subject positions are inferiorized through Downloaded by [University of Western Ontario] at 08:58 17 November 2014 a masculine/feminine dualism that defines women as other to, and dependent upon, the masculine norm (Butler, 2004;Irigaray, 1993). Studies have explored women's depression as a loss or crisis of self that is connected to the cultural value and gender positions produced within what Irigaray called a phallocentric economy of desire and affect (Hetherington & Stoppard, 2002;Jack, 1991;Kangas, 2001;Mauthner, 2003;McMullen, 2003;Nicolson, 2003;Rowe, 2004;Scattolon & Stoppard, 1999;Vidler, 2005). From this perspective depression manifests as an effect of the emotional relation to self that is produced through a highly judgemental scrutinizing relation that can rarely be appeased or enable the positive valuing of feminine autonomy.…”