Defining Depression:Ethnographic Probings Into The Social Work Of Depression

Depression and its many associated disorders are increasingly common medical diagnoses with growing social prominence in contemporary society.People with mood disorders have to deal with complex meanings of depression in their daily life,which reflects different cognition and experience of different subjects and has important values for mental health social work.Mainstream research has focused on the description and evaluation of social work intervention in connection to psychological counseling and psychiatric treatment.This research takes instead an ethnographic approach.Based on extensive field research in Beijing and Nanjing,this paper attempts to show the complex interface between the personal,social and medical dimensions by documenting lived experiences that vary among those who suffer from or have been diagnosed with the disorder.The cases reported in this study are presented and analyzed with a view towards optimizing research and practice with regard to depression from the professional perspective of social work.