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Journal of Health Psychology, Vol. 12, No. 1, 127-140 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1359105307071746

A Bitter Pill

A Discursive Analysis of Women's Medicalized Accounts of Depression

Michelle N. Lafrance

St Thomas University, Canada

Taking a discourse analytic approach, this article explores how a biomedical understanding is drawn on and mobilized in women's accounts of their depressive experiences. Through talk of diagnosis, and by drawing comparisons between depression and physical illnesses, participants constructed depression as a medical condition with the effect of validating their pain and legitimizing their identities. However, participants' accounts also indicated an uneasy fit between the objective discipline of biomedicine and their subjective experiences of depression. Without tangible evidence to validate the ‘reality’ of their condition, speakers were on precarious ground for talking of themselves and their distress within a biomedical frame. The social construction of biomedicine and stigma for marginalized forms of distress are discussed.

Key Words: depression • discourse analysis • medicalization • stigma


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