The missing work of collaboration: Using assemblages to rethink antidepressant action

How do antidepressants work? This often-asked question continues to attract debate. The depressed individual features in many debates about antidepressants’ action. With this focus, discussion oscillates over whether antidepressants work to remedy chemical imbalances in the brains of depressed people, or produce inauthentic states of being. This article argues shifting the analytic focus away from the depressed individual and onto the collective body, or assemblage, moves debates about how antidepressants work into more productive terrain. This provides a new way of looking at how antidepressants work to facilitate recovery from depression through a series of collaborative connections or relationships. Drawing on the charts, photos, and narratives from research encounters with people who take antidepressants, the article illustrates how medication facilitates the creation of active associations in an assemblage of forces. The article concludes by discussing the new ways of thinking about depression, medication and recovery suggested by this understanding of antidepressant action.