Women's depression: Nursing theory and practice
Jan Horsfall
Associate Professor, Mental Health Nursing, Faculty of Nursing, University of Sydney, NSW
PP: 129
Abstract
This theoretical paper argues that a range of social factors are relevant to the genesis of depression in women. These include stressors which particularly pertain to gender, and include poverty, limited practical and social supports and resources, violence against women and childhood sexual assault. After explicating an interpersonal model for the etiology of depression, the paper outlines approaches that nurses can draw on to take sex-based factors into account when assessing and working with women experiencing depression. Nursing strategies which emphasise hope, use group approaches and deal with emotions and unconscious issues are deemed to be especially important.
Keywords
depression, gender, interpersonal nursing theory, psychodynamics in nursing, social factors in depression, women and mental illness
eContent Home
