Old Black Cloud: A cultural history of mental depression in Aotearoa New Zealand

by Jacqueline Leckie

Mental depression is a serious issue in contemporary New Zealand, and it has an increasingly high profile. But during our history, depression has often been hidden under a long black cloud of denial that we have not always lived up to the Kiwi ideal of being pragmatic and have not always coped.Using historic patient records as a starting place, and informed by her own experience of depression, academic Jacqueline Leckie' s timely social history of depression in Aotearoa analyses its medical, cultural and social contexts through an historical lens. From detailing its links to melancholia and explaining its expression within Indigenous and migrant communities, this engrossing book interrogates how depression was medicalised and has been treated, and how New Zealanders have lived with it.

312 pages, Paperback

Published June 13, 2024

Reviews

[William]

Scourge of papers past history…

I would have liked some more analysis or some sort of narrative thrust or argument. It’s kind of just “check out what this ye olde farmer went to hospital for”.

The last chapter on treatments was interesting however.