Depression and decision-making: A material-discursive analysis of antidepressant use in women

This study examines young women's use of antidepressant medication as a coping strategy for depression. Eleven women between the ages of 18–27 participated in semi-structured interviews designed to explore how women make decisions around medical treatment for depression. Nine out of eleven participants found the experience of taking antidepressants to be positive overall. An analysis of the interview transcripts revealed that women who make the decision to take medication for depression engage in an active process through which they evaluate the effects of the antidepressants, through which they reconcile their concerns around their use of medication, and through which they integrate their experiences of antidepressant use into their understandings of cause and recovery. This study concludes that while it is important to problematize those aspects of antidepressant use that could potentially disempower women, a feminist analysis of antidepressant use that is useful to women must take into account the reality that some women are better able to cope with depression through the use of medication. Feminists can best undertake this type of analysis through both the adoption of a material-discursive framework that recognizes the intertwined nature of social circumstances and embodied experience, and the recognition that women are active agents in their antidepressant use and in their recovery.