School of Psychology, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
School of Psychology, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
J Affect Disord. 2019 Oct 1;257:477-485. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2019.07.017. Epub 2019 Jul 5.
Depression is a leading cause of ill-health and disability globally and encouraging help-seeking and treatment engagement is a key priority of health authorities worldwide. Causal attributions for mental illness have numerous attitudinal and behavioural consequences; however, limited research has explored their implications for attitudes to treatment. This study experimentally investigates the impact of causal attributions for depression on attitudes to specific help-seeking and treatment options.
In an online study, 196 participants read a vignette that emphasised either biological, social or biopsychosocial causes of a character's depression. Participants rated several help-seeking and treatment options on how helpful or harmful they would be for the individual described in the vignette and for themselves personally.
The causal attribution manipulation significantly affected treatment attitudes. Relative to social attributions, emphasising biological causes of depression significantly decreased the perceived helpfulness of lifestyle-based treatments, but did not affect attitudes to psychotherapeutic or medical treatment options. Participants rated most help-seeking and treatment options as less helpful for themselves compared to the vignette character. Participants with personal experience of depression had lower confidence in informal sources of help-seeking and greater confidence in medical treatment.
Limitations include reliance on self-report measures and low reliability of certain sub-scales.
These findings suggest emphasising the biological underpinnings of depression could deter people from engaging with lifestyle-based treatment options. Promoting biopsychosocial theories of depression could increase awareness about the multifactorial causes of depression without negatively impacting the perceived efficacy of any help-seeking or intervention options.
抑郁症是全球范围内导致健康不良和残疾的主要原因，鼓励寻求帮助和接受治疗是全球卫生当局的首要重点。对精神疾病的因果归因会产生许多态度和行为后果；然而，有限的研究探讨了它们对治疗态度的影响。本研究通过实验调查了抑郁症的因果归因对特定寻求帮助和治疗选择的态度的影响。
在一项在线研究中，196 名参与者阅读了一个强调人物抑郁的生物学、社会或生物心理社会原因的小插曲。参与者根据对小插曲中描述的个体和他们自己的个人帮助程度，对几种寻求帮助和治疗的选择进行了评分。
因果归因的操纵显著影响了治疗态度。与社会归因相比，强调抑郁症的生物学原因显著降低了生活方式治疗的感知有用性，但对心理治疗或医疗治疗选择的态度没有影响。与小插曲中的角色相比，参与者认为大多数寻求帮助和治疗的选择对自己的帮助较小。有抑郁症个人经历的参与者对非正式寻求帮助的信心较低，对医疗治疗的信心较高。
局限性包括依赖自我报告的测量方法和某些子量表的可靠性低。
这些发现表明，强调抑郁症的生物学基础可能会阻止人们接受生活方式治疗选择。宣传抑郁症的生物心理社会理论可以提高对抑郁症多因素病因的认识，而不会对任何寻求帮助或干预选择的疗效产生负面影响。
