Explaining depression in the language of burnout
Normative reasons for depression in place of deterministic causes
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4592737 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hidetada Shimizu (0000-0003-2470-0776, University of Edinburgh, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 345 |
| Pages | 116703 |
| Publication date | 2024-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Science & Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0277-9536 • E-ISSN: 1873-5347 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116703 |
| PMID | 38422685 |
| OpenAlex | W4391888220 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 23 |
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in diversifying the understanding and discussion about the causes of depression to move beyond biomedical determinism-a view that biomedical factors are the ultimate cause of an individual's depression. There is increasing emphasis on diversity in how people seek to articulate the causes of depression to incorporate non-biomedical dimensions. Furthermore, the biomedical understanding of depression has been increasingly questioned due especially to emerging limitations in pharmacotherapy. These shifts encourage social analyses that explore what narratives as to the causes of depression are constructed and presented with relative plausibility in different contexts and why and how. By analysing published memoirs of individuals diagnosed with depression in Japan, this study aims to provide fresh insights into narratives around the causes of depression. It illustrates how memoirs portray depression and its perceived causes in characteristic ways in a nation that adopts Western diagnostic systems, biomedical therapeutics and other relevant technologies. I will show that 'burnout' is the dominant theme in the Japanese data, diverging from the predominantly biomedical narrative in Western societies. This burnout narrative depicts depression as the somewhat unfortunate but unsurprising result of overwork arising from individual active adaptations to structural features of the Japanese work culture. I argue that reasons, rather than causes, articulate the making of the burnout narrative by revealing the interplay between the structural and individual and ultimately enrich the understanding of depression. The paper concludes with a call for exploring the shifting relationship between illness and normalcy that the burnout narrative implies. I suggest that further studies could explore how the boundaries between normalcy and illness are enacted and re-enacted and to what avail through public discourse and through shifting diagnostic schemata in the context of different national norms and practices
Burnout · Depression (economics · Economics · Epistemology · Keynesian economics · Normative · Psychiatry · Clinical Psychology · Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout · Mental Health Treatment and Access · Philosophy · Psychological Treatments and Assessments · Psychology
Burnout–depression overlap
Socioeconomic Inequalities in Depression
Symbolic Interactionism
Medicalization of Social Problems
The Discovery of the Unconscious
Making sense of the evolving nature of depression narratives and their inherent conflicts
Hope found in lives lost
Access, accountability, and the proliferation of psychological therapy
Narrative reconstruction of mental illness as a work‐stress‐induced disorder
The loss of sadness
Depression Narratives
Living Worth
Methodological controversies between social and medical sciences
Depression at work, authenticity in question
Making Sense of Depression
Reasons and Causes for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
The genesis of chronic illness
Burnout as an identity rupture in the life course
The moral orders of work and health
Illness and narrative
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |