2
Involvement, activism and social critique for the purpose of liberatory change are the standards of
feminist action research (Gatenby and Humphries, 2000). For women respondents, these are
particularly helpful strategies in that it is important to identify anything that might cause changes in
their lives and impact on service delivery (McKie, 1996:10). The first author developed the Women
and Depression Project (WDP) as feminist action research
1
, using criteria such as problem solving,
collaboration, participation and self-evaluation for depressed women (Kemmis and Mc Taggart, 2000).
Before data collection methods were agreed upon, there was continual feedback from respondents,
particularly in the early stages of the research. As action research, WDP involved continual evaluation
of the research. In a real sense depressed women, as respondents, did the research and helped to
construct the meanings that became ’data’ for interpretation (Olesen, 2000). WDP was established by
the first author in 1994 as part of a nation-wide research program on depression organised by the
National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES) in Helsinki, Finland
(Lehtinen and Katiala-Heino, 1998). WDP became a concerted effort to bring women centred methods
into Finland's NHS and specifically to establish women friendly care practices for depressed women in
mental health services (Laitinen 1999). The idea that a research framework modelled on feminist
therapy adds to our knowledge about women and mental health was an underlying principle. Stoppard
(2000:201) contends we must recognise that the problems women bring to therapists are co-constructed
by their subjectivities and social contexts in which they live. Indeed, in feminist contexts, the social is
particularly influential in shaping subjectivities in the field of mental health (Smith, 1993).
METHOD
The participants in this study (N = 101) were adult women who had defined themselves as being
depressed and/or had been treated for clinical depression
2
. The mean age was 40 with a range from 20
to 65. (The mean age for Finnish women was 39.2.) With regard employment status, 41% of our
respondents were employed - lower than 72%, the national figure for women (Ministry for Foreign
Affairs, 1995). That depressed women are in work less than the general population of women is
supported by previous work in the area (Lennon and Rosenfield, 1992). Sixty-four percent of our
respondents experienced university education which is higher than the national figure of 54% (Husu
1
Given that the first author was also a psychiatric social worker, the establishment of the WDP was
consistent with the reshaping of the profession of Finnish social work at that time (See Satka and
Karvinen 1999).
2
66 out of 101 respondents had at some point in their lives received a psychiatric diagnosis.
Convention