Resisting depression stigma: exploring complementarities and contradictions (360G-Wellcome-200309_Z_15_Z)

Whilst depression itself represents a significant and growing global public health issue, so too does the stigma associated with it, given that people so diagnosed frequently experience and anticipate high levels of discrimination across the world. To date, however, there is limited knowledge about effective strategies to combat stigma related to depression. Problems with stigma concepts complicate this, too, as dissimilar processes, experiences and phenomena can constitute 'stigmatisation', with the consequence that 'stigma resistance' denotes diffuse and contradictory practices across governments, institutions, groups and individuals. This presents significant problems for people diagnosed with depression, carers, policy makers, advocacy experts and medical professionals across the world. How might they best proceed on the issue of depression stigma reduction? The main aim of this three-year sociological study is to address this problem through three interlinked research components that seek to explore complex anti-stigma discourses and practices, ultimately providing evidence which will inform future strategies and concentrate resources. To do this a heuristic of social scales is invoked, which distinguishes ‘global’, ‘national’ and ‘local’ practices. Whilst interweaved in reality, these ‘scales’ provide novel ways through which anti-stigma enactments can be explored. Together they constitute a ‘multi-sited ethnography’ of stigma resistance.