Struggling with a depression diagnosis: Negotiations with diagnostic categories

In this article, I explore how an adult experiences and negotiates the process of being diagnosed with depression, and how she struggles to learn to live under this particular diagnostic descrip- tion. It is based on two interviews with one informant, Bridget, being part of a larger ethnograph- ic eldwork in Denmark among adults diagnosed with depression. Psychiatric diagnoses are the most common categories used when su ering and life problems are to be understood, interpret- ed, and acted upon in Denmark. Bridget’s story is a case in which resistance against, and ongoing negotiations and complicated struggles with, a psychiatric diagnosis stand out, as she continu- ously struggles to articulate an oppositional stance to the dominant diagnostic categories. The negotiations take place in a complex network where medical authorities, the workplace and the diagnostic cultures play a crucial part when the depression diagnosis is negotiated. Bridget’s narrative exempli es how a medical gaze comes to prevail, and a diagnostic language comes to dominate when one is to make sense of emotional distress. Bridget’s story gives a nuanced view of diagnostic processes and adds to our understanding of persons’ ongoing and changing responses to diagnostic labels over time.