Disciplining through Depression: An Analysis of Contemporary Discourse on Women and Depression

Abstract

Today, more than 14 million people reportedly suffer from depression, with the majority of that group being women. Due to the seemingly ubiquitous nature of this disease, this essay seeks to elucidate the ways in which we currently think and talk about women and depression. While previous scholars have explored the social context of women's depression in social scientific studies, this essay provides insight into the ways popular discourse constructs women and depression from a critical rhetoric paradigm. I argue that the dominant discourse about depression constructs women as possessing defective bodies and passive minds; bodies that are sites of danger because of the unpredictable problems that result from women's “natural” susceptibility to depression. The culmination of these claims results in a powerful disciplinary mechanism—one that by encouraging maintenance of the female body functions to both silence the complexity of a unique and wide-ranging experience and mask the cultural, social, and political factors of that experience.

Keywords:

• depression
• women
• discipline
• critical rhetoric