1st Edition
Understanding Depression Feminist Social Constructionist Approaches
By Janet Stoppard
Copyright 2000
256 Pages
by
Routledge
256 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Women are particularly vulnerable to depression. Understanding Depression provides an in-depth critical examination of mainstream approaches to understanding and treating depression from a feminist perspective. Janet Stoppard argues that current approaches give only partial accounts of womens' experiences of depression and concludes that a better understanding will only be achieved when womens'... Read more
Part I: Introduction. Depression: a gendered problem. What is depression? Definitional debates. Part II: Explaining Depression in women: mainstream frameworks. Looking for sources of depression within person environment interactions: diathesis-stress models. Depression and women's psychology: susceptibility or specifity? Social Models of depression: sources of adversity and stress in women's lives. Women's bodies, women's lives and depression: exploring material-discursive approaches. Part III: Embodied lives: understanding depression in women in context. Depression in adolescence: negotiating identities in a girl-poisoning culture. Women's lives and depression: marriage and motherhood. Women and agining: depression in midlife and old age. Part IV: Implications for theory and practise: feminist socil constructionist approaches. Women overcoming depression: coping, treatment and politics. Why new perspectives are needed for understanding depression in women.
Biography
Janet M. Stoppard is a Professor in Psychology at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. She has worked as a clinical psychologist and has published widely in women, mental health and depression.
Janet Stoppard has produced an immensely insightful and thought-provoking work, and my advice to anyone interested in understanding depression is to get hold of it. It fills a gap in the available literature, and points towards new directions for research. - Siân E. Lewis, Psychological Health Sheffield, in 'Feminism & Psychology'
Stoppard provides a clear, well-organized and in-depth critique of the dominant models of depression as well as solid introduction to social constructionist terminology ^DEL She advocates for an understanding that is partial and strives to open up dialogue among and between various modes of thinking ^DEL [This book] would be appropriate as an introductory text for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in psychology, critical theory or women's studies. Additionally, clinicians interested in retheorizing depression from a socio-political perspective will find this book enormously helpful.
- Bethany Riddle, Duquesne University, in Theory & Psychology
