Abstract
Floyd, a middle-class husband and father of two college-age children, enjoyed a cutting-edge career in computer technology before abruptly facing early retirement due to chronic back problems. Suddenly confronted with a lifestyle of restrictions, an opposite reality from his lifelong workaholic and family provider identities, Floyd spiraled into a deep depression. This case study explores the intersecting roles that acculturation, gender, and cultural attitudes play in a depression experience for Floyd, a U.S.-born Mexican American man from the southwestern United States. Through a Chicano explanatory model lens, Floyd’s case suggests a shift away from traditional norms of machismo toward openness to various depression treatment possibilities that include individualist (i.e., 2 intrapersonal coping, individual agency, faith reliance) and collectivist (i.e., turning to family members for counsel) tendencies. Importantly, cost, access to health care, and language barriers are not among primary reasons for deciding against addressing depression medically; rather, the explanatory model for depression experience and treatment methods that Floyd describes includes complementary alternatives (i.e., prayer, a curandera,1 family members as counselors) and some combination of health care services (i.e., psychiatric therapy, medication regimens). The combination of preferred treatments comes from an explanatory model for depression that bridges Floyd’s Chicano cultural preferences and medical options available through health insurance.