This dissertation explores different discursive spaces (memoirs, online magazines, local art galleries) in which women and men narrate their recoveries from various mental disorders. I argue that these narratives, and the discursive spaces in which they are told, are rhetorically strategic, and ultimately allow the authors agency within a broader climate of surveillance, oppression, and stigmatization. These writings resist, transgress, and at times, (re)construct the medical model of recovery and sociocultural expectations of people, particularly women, with disorders. Their narratives also complicate our current understandings of writing spaces, especially those coupled with the power of digital technology. Memoirs and online discursive spaces mark a shift in the voices of women with mental disorders, from persons oppressed by their illness, doctors, and society at large, to women challenging the medical model of mental illness, and ultimately creating their own models of recovery.
These recovery narratives engage the medical model in interesting ways, such as by resisting it from within, as with those medical practitioners diagnosed with mental disorders themselves (Jamison, Slater) who write about their experiences in very public spaces (memoirs). Other narratives are seemingly compliant with conventional modes of treatment prescribed by the medical model, such as the Fresh A.I.R. Gallery artists who exhibit their works in a space funded by a comprehensive mental healthcare organization. Still others construct their own models of recovery by navigating through contradictory medical information (Reader's Digest) and voicing their opinions against medical authority in online spaces. I call upon Adrienne Rich's notions of revision and recovery as the theoretical framework I employ throughout my dissertation project. My project seeks to open a dialogue between rhetoric, feminisms, and disability studies so that an enabling theory of mental health discourse will emerge.