The Art and Practice of Developing an Anxiety and Depression Literacy

Abstract

This qualitative dissertation projection explores how eight participants respond to receiving a dual diagnosis of anxiety and depression. Drawing on three semi-structured interviews with each participant, I offer “anxiety and depression literacy” as a central concept, defined as the ongoing process of a person finding, understanding, and using information related to anxiety and depression, and making informed decisions and actions related to their personal health and wellbeing. To conceptualize and theorize how a person develops an anxiety and depression literacy, I ask: where do participants find information related to anxiety and depression; how do participants read information related to anxiety and depression; how do participants use information related to anxiety and depression; and what kinds of decisions and actions do participants make related to anxiety and depression? In centering on my participants’ experiential knowledge and everyday meaning-making practices, my concept of an anxiety and depression literacy serves as an intervention to how some health and medical professionals treat a person’s health literacy as non-situated; that is, not taking into account a person’s context and subject positions. I argue that when we fail to situate literacy developments, we overlook the social nature of literacy development—the ways in which individuals make meaning of their experiences through dialogue with others and engagements with a range of circulating discourses—and we treat literacy development as “having arrived” at a particular endpoint rather than understanding it as an ongoing process. Instead, in underscoring the social nature of developing an anxiety and depression literacy, I reveal the ways in which participants identify and gather a range of resources while reading and making meaning about anxiety and depression. I argue that these representations of anxiety and depression that participants make from their reading practices construct their identities, informing their sense of self; participants’ practices of reading their anxiety and depression can therefore open up new ways of being in the world. Building on scholarship in disability studies, new literacy studies, rhetoric, and medical humanities, my work demonstrates how two groups of people—health literacy sponsors and participants—with different discourses, reading motivations and practices can find ways to read and understand each other. Each chapter offers instances of health literacy sponsors and participants listening and translating knowledge and information with each other and details literacy practices of reading anxiety and depression, including how participants read health and medical knowledge, their physical surroundings, their habitual, personal practices, and circulating discourses and narratives about anxiety and depression. My project offers approaches for how to listen carefully to how participants are thinking about their daily routines, activities, and spaces and translating that information, demonstrating how these two seemingly distinct groups of people can find ways to connect, to meet in the middle and learn from one another, continuously developing their anxiety and depression literacies. This research contributes to discussions on the social nature of literacy development and situated literacies and has implications for communities supporting individuals living with anxiety and depression, including health and medical practitioners, disability and health organizations, educational institutions, and health literacy programs aimed at informing and teaching individuals about anxiety and depression. Ultimately, my hope is that this project supports all of us in becoming better readers of the myriad ways in which people who struggle with anxiety and depression create sustainable, meaningful lives.