Abstract
Psychiatric science defines depression with a fixed set of symptom manifestations, presumed to be universal across cultures, while different studies have documented the presence of variation in manifestations and experiences of depression. The role of culture, as a system of beliefs and values that impacts individuals’ experiences of and encounters with depression, however, has been largely overlooked in the literature. Noting the importance of first-person accounts of depression, the phenomenological framework for understanding the role of culture in sha** experiences of depression is introduced. Through a phenomenologically informed cross-cultural comparison of experiences of depression between Iran and the UK, it is hoped that a plausible account of the cultural sha** of depression can be given. The chapter includes details of aims and methodology of the study and offers a summary of chapters and arguments that follow.
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Notes
- 1.
Reasons for this could include a lack of trust among individuals for sharing their experiences with a stranger (arguably heightened by the lack of independent institutions and free research in the country); lack of access to the internet and widespread censorship of online spaces, among others. Such background elements should nonetheless be borne in mind as limitations faced by such research in a country with different norms and conditions concerning qualitative research, especially in the absence of researcher.
- 2.
I would like to thank Dr Ebrahim Moghimi and Ms Sepideh Ghorbani for their help facilitating this part of the research.
- 3.
I thank Dr Benedict Smith for his suggestion of the question clarifying the distinction between depression and other forms of sadness in Iran.
- 4.
It should be noted that in conducting the comparative element with the UK sample, I refer only to the published material from the Durham study and not to any part of the raw data associated with it.
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Mirdamadi, M. (2023). Introduction. In: A Phenomenological Study of Depression in Iran. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30407-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30407-1_1
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