Writing Recovery from Depression Through a Creative Research Assemblage: Mindshackles, Digital Mental Health, and a Feminist Politics of Self-Care

Abstract

In this chapter we write through an academic-arts collaboration, or creative research assemblage, to explore the dilemmas surrounding cultural representations of women's experiences of recovery from depression. We focus our discussion on the Mindshackles website that was created by, Iesha, to offer 'personal stories about reclaiming life from mental ill health.' By documenting diverse stories with photographic images, film and sound, Mindshackles makes visible the everyday leisure practices that women enact as self care in recovering their sense of aliveness. We explore feminist questions about how documentary practices can shape digital representations of mental health in ways that both reveal and conceal issues of gender and power.

Developments in qualitative inquiry.

“…Postqualitative approaches fully reject scientism, collapsing value-laden distinctions between systematic analysis of empirical and other forms of knowledge generation. This opens up the possibility for a methodological point of approach and style of doing research that deemphasizes the need to establish a particular style of proof and might lean toward, for instance, listening for silences (e.g., Bengtsson & Fynbo, 2018;Mazzei, 2013), making art (e.g., Fullagar & Small, 2019;Renold, 2018), making space for affect to matter (e.g., Ringrose & Renold, 2014), or poetry as a form of articulating research findings (e.g., Chadwick, 2018). Many of these studies represent interdisciplinary research or research not conducted within psychology, highlighting the significant potential for greater engagement for psychologists with these approaches.…”

Digital community assets: Investigating the impact of online engagement with arts and peer support groups on mental health during COVID‐19

“…The introduction of digital forms of mental health support has featured across the landscape of mental health care; including online access to general and specialist health professionals; accessing formal advice and guidance; downloading and using mental health‐focussed mobile apps; engaging with online forums and engaging with automated agents such as chatbots (Fortuna et al., 2020; Mehrotra & Tripathi, 2018; Wilson, 2022). The digitisation of mental health cannot be simply defined or categorised, as it covers a huge range of activity and areas of support (Fullagar & Small, 2019; Hollis et al., 2018; Torous et al., 2020). The COVID‐19 pandemic has accelerated the use of digital forms of support, as repeated ‘lockdowns’ across the globe severely limited engagement with in‐person forms of support (Liberati et al., 2022; Vadivel et al., 2021).…”