ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to analyse the views with the help of illness accounts told by Finnish people suffering from depression. The fact that depression has become a major public health problem in the western world is a sign of this tension between individuals and society. The data consist of two small sets of interviews conducted in order to explore how people suffering from depression interpret and experience their illness. A generational distinction can also be noticed in the perceptions of depression. The view of depression among the female university students was slightly different. They also explained their depression with childhood deprivations and later provoking events and circumstances, and also with stress overload, sometimes combining these explanations. The more internalised and intrapsychical views the young women voiced are still alarming; they suggest a disempowerment and detachment of individuals in relation to the social determinants of depression.
