Problematizing the neurochemical subject of anti-depressant treatment: the limits of biomedical responses to women's emotional distress.
In this article we situate empirical research into women's problematic experiences of anti-depressant medication within broader debates about pharmaceuticalization and the rise of the neurochemical self. We explore how women interpreted and problematized anti-depressant medication as it impeded their recovery in a number of ways. Drawing upon Foucauldian and feminist work we conceptualize anti-depressants as biotechnologies of the self that shaped how women thought about and acted upon their embodied (and hence gendered) subjectivities. Through the interplay of biochemical, emotional and socio-cultural effects medication worked to shape women's self-in-recovery in ways that both reinscribed and undermined a neurochemical construction of depression. Our analysis outlines two key discursive constructions that focused on women's problematization of the neurochemical self in response to the side-effects of anti-depressant use. We identified how the failure of medication to alleviate depression contributed to women's reinterpretation of recovery as a process of 'working' on the emotional self. We argue that women's stories act as a form of subjugated knowledge about the material and discursive forces shaping depression and recovery. These findings offer a gendered critique of scientific and market orientated rationalities underpinning neurochemical recovery that obscure the embodied relations of affect and the social conditions that enable the self to change.
Department of Tourism, Leisure, Hotel and Sport Management, Griffith University, Nathan campus, 4111, QLD, Australia. s.fullagar@griffith.edu.au
Simone
S
Fullagar
Wendy
W
O'Brien
D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000534:rehabilitation; D000928:Antidepressive Agents / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000494:pharmacology; D003863:Depression / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D036262:Empirical Research; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009420:Nervous System / Q000187:drug effects; D012649:Self Concept
D000928:Antidepressive Agents