Division of Psychiatry, Department of Clinical Science, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
J Affect Disord. 2010 Jul;124(1-2):54-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2009.10.032. Epub 2009 Nov 18.
Patients' beliefs about the cause of their depression can affect their help-seeking behavior, treatment preferences, coping strategies and treatment compliance. There are few studies exploring depressed patients' beliefs about the causes and to our knowledge none in a Swedish population. However, previous studies show that the patients more often mention environmental and psychological causes than biological. The aim of this study was to further explore depressed patients' answers to an open-ended question about the etiology of their depression.
Primary care patients, participating in a study evaluating patient education, were asked an open-ended question about their beliefs about what had caused their depression. Answers were obtained from 303 patients.
The analysis of the patients' beliefs emerged into 16 different categories of explanations for depression that could be organized into three larger themes: current life stressors, past life events and constitutional factors. Work-related stress was the most commonly mentioned cause, followed by personality and current family situation. Only 3.6% stated biological reasons.
We could only count the frequency of mentioned causes, but no ranking of the importance of these causes.
Primary care patients often gave multi-causal explanations to their depression. Biological explanations were rare. Their beliefs were predominantly current life stressors such as work or family situation and also their own personality. Patients' beliefs about their illness are important in the patient-doctor encounter, when developing new treatment strategies aiming at improved adherence to both psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments and also in patient education programs.
患者对抑郁症病因的看法会影响其寻求帮助的行为、治疗偏好、应对策略和治疗依从性。目前很少有研究探讨抑郁患者对病因的看法，据我们所知，在瑞典人群中也没有研究。然而，先前的研究表明，患者更多地提到环境和心理原因，而不是生物原因。本研究旨在进一步探讨抑郁患者对其抑郁症病因的开放性问题的回答。
参与评估患者教育的初级保健患者被问到一个关于他们对抑郁病因的看法的开放性问题。从 303 名患者中获得了答案。
对患者信念的分析分为 16 种不同的抑郁解释类别，可以归纳为三个更大的主题：当前生活压力源、过去生活事件和体质因素。与工作相关的压力是最常提到的原因，其次是个性和当前家庭状况。只有 3.6%的人表示是生物原因。
我们只能计算提到的原因的频率，而不能对这些原因的重要性进行排名。
初级保健患者经常对他们的抑郁症给出多因解释。生物解释很少。他们的信念主要是当前的生活压力源，如工作或家庭状况，以及他们自己的个性。患者对疾病的信念在医患接触时很重要，在制定旨在提高对精神药理学和心理治疗依从性的新治疗策略时很重要，在患者教育计划中也很重要。
