Using Narratives to Explore Sense of Self in Depression

Background: Sense of self in depression as expressed through fiction and nonfiction narrative literature is explored during three eras of American psychiatry: asylums, deinstitutionalization and neuropsychiatry. The parallel study of American psychiatry provides context for changing definitions of both self and depression. Focusing on structure and agency, self in depression is examined within particular historical, political and sociocultural contexts, important elements in understanding depression in diverse communities.

Theoretical framework: The research is based on a qualitative comparison of the definitions and experience of depression especially with regard to personal and official perceptions of illness.

Main research question: What is the role of narrative literature in framing the expression and understanding of sense of self in depression?

Methodology: The methods were interpretive and dialogic. Personal narratives were juxtaposed with official (historical, medical, political) narratives to determine the role of historical and socio-cultural influences on the experience of depression and to validate experience within and across eras.

Results: Narratives provide a window to experience, ways of mediating depression, and a public medium that engages writers and readers as they interpret the world.

Implications for practice: Narratives can help dissect and thus illuminate the official language of medicine and psychiatry and the personal language of depression. Narrative literature, at the intersection of science and the humanities, can aid understanding, including of cultural differences, in the interpretation of stigmatized conditions.