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This chapter explores the associations between personality factors, depression, and self-silencing. The authors contend that there are many reasons why individuals engage in self-silencing and these reasons reflect personality vulnerability factors associated with depression that are also associated with self-silencing. They present evidence that self-silencing combines with these personality factors, either as mediators or as moderators, to increase the risk for depression in certain individuals. Through an examination of particular personality variables, namely dependency, self-criticism, and perfectionism, the authors demonstrate that people with vulnerable personalities who also engage in self-silencing may suffer from chronic and destructive forms of stress that can be damaging to health and well-being.

This chapter explores the portability of the self-silencing construct across a range of contexts and cultures. The authors present findings from their studies investigating correlations between depression, self-esteem, relationship adjustment, role taking, conflict tactics, and social class across diverse ethnicities, sexual orientations, and gender. These studies included samples of ethnic minority college students; community samples of young club-going singles and female dancers; urbanites in western India; Pakistani and Indian women immigrants to America with arranged marriages; and community samples of gays, lesbians, and heterosexuals in committed relationships. The results of these studies demonstrate the multifaceted nature of the self-silencing construct, as well as its relevance to topics such as violence and high-risk sexual behaviors. The authors suggest topics for future investigations that grow out of their research.

This chapter brings a biobehavioral model of stress and attachment theory to explore whether self-silencing can be viewed as an adaptive mode of coping for women within the social expectations prescribed by gender stereotypes in Polish society. The author argues that self-silencing may serve an adaptive function for a woman by ensuring the protection and raising of her children; however, the chapter also acknowledges that such adaptation may compromise psychological health. The author reports that her findings with Polish women demonstrate that self-silencing is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon in its relation to stress and well-being. The chapter also describes the need for further research into the interplay between social contexts, gender roles and the status of women in our understanding of self-silencing and its correlates.

This chapter examines generational differences and gender differences in self-silencing amidst changing social values in Finland. Finnish women have historically taken part in the labor market outside of the home and have been breadwinners for many generations. In recent decades, there has been an even more pronounced movement away from traditional gender roles in Finnish families, with women often sharing many childcare and household tasks with men. Given this social and historical context, the author investigates whether younger generations of Finnish women differ from older Finnish women on self-silencing, and whether Finnish men and women differ on self-silencing. The chapter reports the author's findings that show younger women scoring lower than older women, and men scoring higher than women on self-silencing. These findings are discussed in light of social expectations for women in Finnish society, and in light of the social dictates that lead Finnish men to be relationally and emotionally distant.

This chapter examines how self-silencing and depression are affected in gender-specific ways by the changing social context in Nepal. The authors explore whether self-silencing relates to depression differently in Nepal than it does Western industrialized countries. To examine this question, the authors draw upon data they have collected through three studies in Kathmandu, Nepal. The chapter outlines the findings from these studies, which used interviews, focus groups, and quantitative questionnaires to understand the experiences of depression and self-silencing among Nepalese men and women. The authors argue that gender is an important factor in explaining the risks and consequences associated with self-silencing and depression in Nepal, but also that both men and women are at risk for depression when they silence themselves in attempting to maintain social and familial harmony.

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.

This chapter challenges the common pathologizing view of premenstrual change that characterizes premenstrual symptoms as representing a psychological or biomedical disorder. The authors present a contrasting view and argue that premenstrual symptoms are more accurately characterized as a disruption in the self-silencing that women engage in for 3 weeks of the month. Drawing upon their interviews with women, they describe the contextual and intrapsychic factors that combine to produce the premenstrual expression of anger, irritation, or sadness. The chapter argues that dismissing premenstrual distress as illness serves to silence women and contributes to a cycle of further emotional suppression, followed by premenstrual emotional eruption.

This chapter explores how the construct of self-silencing can contribute to our understanding of the effects of socio-cultural expectations placed on German women. The authors provide historical and social perspectives on the experiences of German women to illustrate the explanatory role of self-silencing theory for depression. The chapter describes German values regarding women's mothering roles (e.g., self-sacrifice and selflessness) and relates those values to risk factors for self-silencing and depression, presenting evidence that the Silencing the Self Scale distinguishes between depressed women, agoraphobic women, and healthy women. The authors also examine self-silencing, attachment styles and effects of violence on depression. They suggest that the experience of violence is an underlying factor for both self-silencing and mental health problems in women, and emphasize the importance of the trend in Germany toward increased public awareness of the damaging effects of violence against women.[Q1]

This chapter examines the connections between self-silencing and gendered discourses about love, power, and violence in intimate relationships. The context of this analysis is current day Portuguese society, and the authors present their findings from an exploratory research project with Portuguese women using as their measures the Silencing the Self Scale and their Discourses about Intimacy questionnaire. The chapter argues that women's silence is linked to cultural norms and a rigid gender hierarchy that define self-sacrificing love as a natural characteristic of women while assuming that men naturally will take on a position of authority. The authors argue that these essentialist notions restrict women's self-determination and provide men with the social license to engage in physical, psychological, and sexual violence.

This chapter describes the physical and mental health consequences encountered by women experiencing intimate male partner violence. Drawing upon on the literature and upon her research, the author describes women's self-silencing within intimate relationships and the associations between silencing and physical and mental health symptoms. The chapter also describes the challenges and barriers within the healthcare system that hinder abused women's attempts to receive effective and supportive care. The author discusses socio-cultural influences that can affect an abused woman's process of healing by socializing women to avoid expressing anger and other strong negative emotions. She also describes alternative models of care that can be adopted to improve healthcare utilization for women who have experienced intimate partner violence.

This chapter examines self-silencing and loss of voice in women's experiences of eating disorders. The authors put forward a model that links etiological perspectives, self-silencing, and eating disorder behaviors, arguing that a critical function of eating disorder behaviors is communication and management of emotions and that these behaviors reinforce and perpetuate the self-silencing schema through a negative feedback loop. The model is based on a series of studies in Canada with clinical samples of adolescents and adult women with anorexia and/or bulimia compared with various types of control groups.[Q2] The authors suggest that women who feel unable to express an authentic self through words may use their bodies as a means of communicating emotional distress. The authors describe treatment strategies and suggest that the most effective interventions engage women in collaborative nonhierarchical relationships that focus on readiness for change and that address the functions of the eating disorder.