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This research explored the experiences of 27 women who had been hospitalized in psychiatric units in southern New Brunswick Canada. The women's accounts of their experiences of hospital admission, treatment and discharge are described. Hospitalization provided the women with a respite from burdensome family responsibilities and unsatisfactory relationships in a safe, protected environment. However, this asylum aspect of hospitalization was contrasted with the powerlessness experienced by the women because of their lack of control over decisions made about their admission, treatment and discharge. In conclusion, it is argued that strategies for the improvement of mental health care for women should be grounded in an understanding of women's experiences.

Evidence of the burden of depression for women worldwide and of the link between depression and the economic and social conditions of women's lives provides a firm grounding for feminist-informed understandings of depression. We focus on the conjunction of women and depression as a site for assessing the influence of feminism in Canadian psychology. On the basis of our analysis of two 'fact sheets' - one on depression and one on postpartum depression - that appear on the website of the Canadian Psychological Association, we conclude that feminist-informed understandings of depression are almost completely absent in the accounts of depression presented to the public. We explore reasons for the resistance to such understandings through reference to psychology's reliance on individualist conceptions and to the contemporary climate in which Canadian clinical psychology is located.

This study involved a discourse analytic investigation of 15 women's accounts of their experiences of recovery from depression. Participants' descriptions of depression revolved around their lives as women, consumed by domestic practices and governed by the needs of others. In contrast, recovery was constructed within a narrative of personal transformation in which participants relinquished their good woman practices and attended to their own needs. However, participants appeared to face a discursive double bind whereby letting go of domestic and caring work and beginning to care for themselves were both central to their wellness and threatening to their identities as women. The analysis explores the ways in which participants negotiated and resisted dominant discourses of femininity in their accounts of recovery from depression.