Essential Structure and Meaning of Recovery from Clinical Depression for Middle-Adult Women: A Phenomenological Study

Abstract

The author interviewed 22 women who had been clinically depressed and were in the recovery stage, as evidenced by their self-evaluations and scores on the Beck Depression Inventory. The focus of the interviews was on the phenomenological question concerning the meaning of the women's experiences of recovering from depression. Five phases in the recovery process were identified from analysis of the data: existential alienation/pain, crises of adulthood, first turning point, second turning point, and becoming a gardener. Nurses can use perceptions of clients in this study about what was helpful and not helpful and the tools they used to help themselves in recovering from depression to enhance the recovery process for other depressed women.

Revision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction—is for us more than a chapter in cultural history; it is an act of survival. Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity; it is a part of her refusal of the self-destructiveness of the male-dominated society. (Rich, 1979, p. 35)