Silence in Mood Disorders
A Philosophical Investigation
Dan Degerman(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 21. July 2026
Book
Hardback
188 pages
978-1-032-46715-3 (ISBN)
Description
We live in a society that valorises speech and treats silence as a harm to be broken. In mental health discourse, this assumption runs especially deep. Silence is medicalised as a symptom, pathologised as a cause, and targeted by campaigns urging people to open up. Silence in Mood Disorders challenges this consensus, arguing that the dominant understanding of silence in mental illness is not only conceptually impoverished but potentially damaging to the very people it claims to help.
Drawing on first-person accounts of depression and bipolar disorder alongside phenomenology, social epistemology, and silence studies, this book shows that silence in mood disorders is a far more diverse and complex phenomenon than prevailing assumptions allow. To make sense of this diversity, the book develops a set of interconnected conceptual resources for thinking about silence. Central among these is an account of silence as a fragile, embodied, and epistemically significant human capacity, whose disruption may take different forms in depression and mania. These resources are then used to suggest how mental health research, clinical practice, policy, and activism might respond to silence with greater care and discernment.
Silence in Mood Disorders will appeal to scholars and advanced students in philosophy of psychiatry, phenomenology, and social epistemology, and will reward anyone working in mental health research, the medical humanities, or disability studies.
Drawing on first-person accounts of depression and bipolar disorder alongside phenomenology, social epistemology, and silence studies, this book shows that silence in mood disorders is a far more diverse and complex phenomenon than prevailing assumptions allow. To make sense of this diversity, the book develops a set of interconnected conceptual resources for thinking about silence. Central among these is an account of silence as a fragile, embodied, and epistemically significant human capacity, whose disruption may take different forms in depression and mania. These resources are then used to suggest how mental health research, clinical practice, policy, and activism might respond to silence with greater care and discernment.
Silence in Mood Disorders will appeal to scholars and advanced students in philosophy of psychiatry, phenomenology, and social epistemology, and will reward anyone working in mental health research, the medical humanities, or disability studies.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced
Illustrations
5 s/w Tabellen
5 Tables, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Weight
453 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-032-46715-3 (9781032467153)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Dan Degerman is Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol. His research interests lie at the intersection of mental health, emotion, and politics. He is the author of Political Agency and the Medicalisation of Negative Emotions (EUP, 2022) and editor of The Politics of Negative Emotions (BUP, 2023).
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Social Hermeneutics of Silence in Mental Illness
Experiences of Silence in Mood Disorders
Empty Silence, Depression, and Bodily Doubt
Mania and the Capacity to be Silent
Silence as Epistemic Agency in Mania
Depression and the Capacity to be Inwardly Silent
Conclusion
Introduction
The Social Hermeneutics of Silence in Mental Illness
Experiences of Silence in Mood Disorders
Empty Silence, Depression, and Bodily Doubt
Mania and the Capacity to be Silent
Silence as Epistemic Agency in Mania
Depression and the Capacity to be Inwardly Silent
Conclusion