Sadness or depression: Making sense of low mood and the medicalization of everyday life

Christian Bröer and Broos Besseling

Social Science & Medicine, 2017, vol. 183, issue C, 28-36

Abstract: This research focusses on low mood as a generic category in everyday social interactions, outside the clinical realm and among non-patients. We examine if and how a clinical depression label and treatment are employed when low mood occurs in everyday life, which enables us to analyze the extent and content of medicalization and brings to the fore the interactional mechanisms and cultural concerns that potentially drive medicalization. The analysis is based on 316 observations of everyday life in the Netherlands. We observed and recorded interactions in which low mood was spontaneously expressed.

Keywords: The Netherlands; Medicalization; Depression; Everyday life; Observational methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:183:y:2017:i:c:p:28-36

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.04.025

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