The Discourses of Depression: From Social Pathology to the Construction of Neurochemical "Self"

This work was devoted to the study of the phenomenon of medicalization and neurochemicalization of depression in Russia. Based on the conducted theoretical and empirical analysis, we assume, without claiming to be representative of the results, to highlight the following features of medicalization and neurochemistry of depression. Firstly, we'll begin with the general provisions on mental disorders that are applicable to depression. The depth of experience discourses about depression is primarily related to social disorder, not personal failures. Special significance of moral stigma of affective mood disorders from the social environment - in Russia, in particular, is expressed in pointing to “laziness” and the general low moral qualities of future patients who acquire the diagnosis of “depression”. The perception of subjective physicality, both among women and men, is of great importance in the rooting of depressive discourse. Individuals, in collaboration with a doctor, reproduce the communicative variations of the paternalistic model of doctor-patient relationships. The transition to medical treatment, and, at the same time, the neurochemistry of depression, is associated with changes in the experience of perceiving one's subjectivity and the social environment as a whole.