Becoming depressed. Biographical accounts of depression labeling in users of mental health services in Santa Fe, Argentina

Abstract

This article analyzes biographical accounts of people from the middle sectors who acknowledge having depression and participate, as users, in mental health services in the city of Santa Fe, Argentina. It presents the results of an empirical investigation that research from a sociological perspective how and through which resources they come to be considered depressive or depressed. First, the article analyzes the process by which they acquire the depression label to reference their biographies. It describes the transition from a period of identity confusion, in which they cannot explain their emotions, to the recognition and acquisition of that term to account for their moods and identities. Second, it examines four ways of recognizing depression: from a biographical crisis, receiving a psychiatric diagnosis, participating in therapies and cultural resources such as books and the internet. Self-labeling, through the perception of emotional deviation is more relevant in the stories than external labeling, based on expert judgment. It concludes in the centrality that self-labeling involves in these emotional problems in contexts of biographical hyperreflexivity.