Writing recovery from depression through a creative research assemblage: Mindshackles, digital mental health and a feminist politics of self-care

In this chapter we write through an academic-arts collaboration, or creative research assemblage, to explore the dilemmas surrounding cultural representations of women’s experiences of recovery from depression. We focus our discussion on the Mindshackles website that was created by, Iesha, to offer ‘personal stories about reclaiming life from mental ill health.’ By documenting diverse stories with photographic images, film and sound, Mindshackles makes visible the everyday leisure practices that women enact as self care in recovering their sense of aliveness. We explore feminist questions about how documentary practices can shape digital representations of mental health in ways that both reveal and conceal issues of gender and power.