Episode 28: Feminism and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery

On this episode of The Gender Card, we delve into the complexities and wide-ranging experiences of women recovering from depression. Griffith University’s Professor Simone Fullagar and Dr Adele Pavlidis have just released a book along with their colleague Wendy O’Brien, called Feminism and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery. Their research approach uses poems and feminist memory to explore why women report much higher rates of depression than men, yet gender is often ignored in medical and therapeutic responses. As they write in their introduction, “We invite readers to engage with this book as a co-constituted process of reading-writing through visceral connections - guts, brains, hearts, skin, words, images, surfaces - to explore how gender matters…we all feel the weight of another woman’s suffering that remains invisible, unrecognised in ways that matter deeply”. Their years of research are shining a light on society’s hesitancy to talk about gender as a crucial factor shaping depression, and what implications this has for more effective prevention, treatment and recovery options.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.