A melancholic musing: Women's narratives on depression (Persimmon Blackbridge, Evelyn Lau, Lauren Slater, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Meri Nana-Ama Danquah)

The number of women diagnosed with clinical depression has soared over the past few decades. Very little is known, however, about what depression means to those women who experience it, as relatively few first person narratives relating the lived experience of depression are available. This research explored four oral history narratives and five published narratives by women who have firsthand experience of depression, in an attempt to shed insight into the meaning(s) of depression in the lives of contemporary women. The narrators of the four oral histories are diverse in terms of age, race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and level of education. The five published narratives explored are Persimmon Blackbridge's (1997) novel Prozac Highway, Evelyn Lau's (2001) memoir Inside/Out: Reflections on a life so far, Lauren Slater's (1998) autobiography Prozac Diary, Elizabeth Wurtzel's (1995) memoir Prozac Nation: Young & Depressed in America, and Meri Nana-Ama Danquah's (1998) memoir Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression.; Topics discussed included the impact of discourses of biomedicine and femininity on women's depression experiences, as well as the relationship between postmodernism and depression. Connections between depression and women's creativity were also explored. Women's experiences with Prozac and other anti-depressants, as well as their experiences with traditional and alternative 'treatments' for depression, were used as a starting point for discussion about the strengths and limitations for feminisms of the various resolutions to depression that exist today. Finally, the research concluded with discussion of the merits of the recent material-discursive models posed for understanding depression in women differently.