Introduction: Culture, Self-Silencing, and Depression: A Contextual-Relational Perspective

This chapter introduces the concept of this international book and the relevance of the self-silencing construct to understanding depression and related problems across cultures, contexts, and populations. The chapter summarizes silencing the self theory and situates the theory among other psychological theories of depression. The authors each describe the research that led them to become interested in the idea of this edited volume in which contributors from a range of different countries and settings explore self-silencing, and they provide a summary of the content of the book. The chapter also presents issues arising from research on self-silencing that raise questions for further investigation as well as ideas that relate self-silencing theory to broader constructs of "culture" and "self." The authors argue that examining how gender-specific norms and social inequality affect self-silencing within relationships and across cultures is necessary for a fuller understanding of depression and its treatment.