TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2014//
TI  - The melancholy of murderous mothers: depression and the medicalization of women's anger
JO  - Feminism and psychology
A1  - Kruger, Lou-Marié
A1  - van Straaten, Kirsten
A1  - Taylor, Laura
A1  - Lourens, Marleen
A1  - Dukas, Carla
SP  - 461
EP  - 478
VL  - 24
IS  - 4
N2  - Informed by recent feminist critiques of the notion of depression, we explored how a group of South African low-income mothers who have been diagnosed with depression subjectively describe and explain their psychological distress. Working within a feminist materialist-discursive framework, we focused on both the explicit content of what the women were saying and on the implicit or underlying discourses that informed their narratives. Our findings suggest that respondents often subjectively experienced their psychological distress as anger, which was also articulated in violence directed at their children. This suggests that not only does the diagnosis of depression serve to medicalize the distress of participants, but it may simultaneously serve to obscure their anger at having to mother in adverse conditions. In exploring reasons for their anger, we found that participants were frustrated with trying to live up to idealized notions of motherhood in impoverished contexts.<p/>  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0959-3535
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959353514539653
ID  - ref1
ER  -