Shattering the Bell Jar: Metaphor, Gender, and Depression

Abstract

Working from 38 interviews with people who had experienced depression this study compares metaphors with those identified in previous research. It also compares the types of metaphor of men and women talking about depression and how these metaphors were used in discourse so as to determine whether or not the expression of depression is gendered. The types of metaphor used by women and men are generally similar (“descent,” “weight and pressure” and “darkness and light” metaphors) and there is a large group of metaphors relating to containment and constraint for which there is only limited evidence in previous research. This leads to a model for depression in which the self is “contained” within a depression but also “contains” sad feelings that are trapped. There are some interesting differences between genders in how metaphors are used with greater evidence of metaphor priming and metaphor mixing in the interviews with women. Expression of these “trapped” feelings may be an important part of the process of recovery and metaphor priming and mixing may facilitate this. Therapists should encourage clients to use diverse metaphors to convey the intensity of their emotions even if the feelings they convey are negative ones.

Notes

¹Pragglejaz Group (2007, p. 19) found complete agreement among all six analysts that “depression” is a metaphor in the following utterance: “What i— emerges (6) is depression (6) is a common condition which is under-diagnosed and under-treated.”

² http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/information/mental-health-overview/statistics

³ http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1092

⁴I say “formally” because interviewers have reported to me cases where interviewees have said that the research interview was the most effective therapy they had experienced.

⁵ http://www.healthtalkonline.org was developed by Oxford University Medical Research Centre.

⁶A search was made for lemmas, that is all morphological variations of a root form, so “move” includes “move,” “moves,” “moved,” “moving,” and 'movement.”

⁷The last figure indicates age at the time of the interview.

⁸The log-likelihood test was used for this.