Assembling depression: Ambivalent relations between experiential and clinical knowledge

This article explores how experiential knowledge held by individuals with depression relates to clinical knowledge. Traditional biomedical approaches often overlook or objectify lived experience, limiting understanding of depression. Recognizing the complexity of depression as a relational and situated phenomenon calls for integrating diverse forms of knowledge. The study draws on 24 semi-structured interviews with people with lived experience of depression in Catalonia, Spain. The analysis focuses on how participants negotiate clinical knowledge. Findings show that participants neither accept nor reject clinical knowledge, but engage ambivalently with diagnosis, medication, psychiatric expertise, and institutions. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory, we argue that ambivalence is a relational practice through which experiential knowledge can become actionable, creating conditions for situated forms of agency within clinical assemblages that are simultaneously enabling and constraining. The study contributes to critical mental health scholarship by showing how experiential and clinical knowledge can be negotiated while sustaining people’s capacity to act within clinical care.