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I. Moving Towards an Understanding of Women’s Depression

In her recent article in this journal, Jane Ussher (2010) provides a wide-ranging review of current approaches to understanding women’s higher rates of reported depression. In her analysis, Ussher identifies critical gaps that arise as a result of the narrow disciplinary scope and restricted epistemological commitment of most theorizing in this field. For Ussher, a fuller understanding of women’s depression and of their higher rates of reported depression requires attention to the materiality of women’s bodies and of the world in which they live, the sociocultural influences that operate discursively to shape their lived experience and the psychological manifestations of gendered socialization. This broader, interdisciplinary array, according to Ussher, can be productively integrated when approached from a critical-realist epistemological standpoint. Thus, Ussher proposes a material-discursive-intrapsychic model as one that overcomes limitations of existing models, as well as avoiding problems, such as medicalization of women’s distress and de-contextualization of women’s depressive suffering, that have long been a source of concern among feminist critics. While in general agreement with Ussher’s pursuit of a model for understanding women’s depressive suffering and their higher rates of reported distress that is more encompassing than available models, there are some points in her article that would benefit from further elaboration. First, although she cautions against uncritical acceptance of findings on intrapsychic concomitants of women depressive experiences, she fails to highlight problems with attempts to locate women’s vulnerability to becoming depressed within their psychology. Second, while her proposed model addresses women’s material embodiment, there is no indication of how this materiality would intersect with discursive and intrapsychic influences. Finally, despite the centrality of gender to her model, little consideration is given to how gender is conceptualized beyond individual gender.