Graduate Program

Clinical Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2005

Thesis Director

Ronan Bernas

Thesis Committee Member

Anupama Sharma

Thesis Committee Member

Marjorie Hanft-Martone

Abstract

This study aimed to provide subjectivist accounts of how people understand and interpret their experience of depression. In the mainstream research on depression, the voices of people who experience depression are largely absent. Therefore, the meanings and experiences of depression from the perspective of people who are living with depression themselves were explored in this study by drawing on in-depth interviews. The stories of two participants diagnosed with depression were examined using the holistic-content and the holistic-form analysis approach proposed by Lieblich, Mashiach, and Ziber (1998). Illness narrative forms outlined by Frank (1998) were also utilized to explore how the participants constructed their stories of depression. Different ways in which people make sense of experiencing a mental illness like depression were highlighted and were contrasted with objectivist accounts of depression.

The narrative approach of the present study provided the participants with an opportunity to gain a voice and to present their own stories. Their stories revealed experiences of depression that were dynamic, constantly evolving, multidimensional and holistic in nature. The participants used individual, social, and cultural sources to make sense of their experience of depression. They used metaphors to convey the overarching suffering central to an illness like depression. In their stories, the participants constantly evaluated their identity, an integral part of the experience of a mental illness like depression. When all the personal details of the participants' depression experience were taken into account, depression became a multi-faceted experience that is embedded in relationships and social settings and not just within an individual experience of pathology.

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