Rethinking women's experiences of depression and recovery as emplacement: Spatiality, care and gender relations in rural Australia

Abstract

In Australia and other OECD countries women who are recovering from depression in rural areas find that access to professional care is fraught with difficulties. Despite the emphasis on the social determinants shaping mental ill health and recovery, Australian rural support has been largely defined by biomedical and psy-expertise focused on correcting biochemistry and cognition through different models of formal medical care. Addressing the limitations of individualised biomedical models, this article offers a relational understanding of how recovery from depression is produced through rural and gendered emplacement (Pink, 2011). Theorising recovery through the notion of emplacement shifts attention from an individualised notion of embodied distress (symptoms, emotions, cognition) towards a social understanding of the dynamics of human and non-human relations that are afforded by different care practices (from medical treatment to social support). To date there has been little critical analysis of how women's distress and recovery experiences are gendered in relation to both formal and informal care in rural places. Extending the insights of geographers, social anthropologists and feminist scholars we analyse the recovery stories of women living in rural and regional Australia. We focus specifically on how rural women experienced uncertainty and stigma that emerged through formal care spaces and impeded their recovery -the gendered dynamics of em(dis)placement were identified. In contrast, we identify how particular informal care spaces enabled women's recovery through multiple relations with human and non-human others. Our research aims to contribute a critical understanding of how everyday professional care and self-care practices are intertwined with the complex gendered negotiations of emplacement and displacement that shape rural mental (ill) health.