Patient attitudes regarding causes of depression: implications for psychoeducation.

OBJECTIVE: Patient attitudes toward mental illness are an important determinant of treatment compliance and treatment outcome. A patient's age, sex, style of thinking, lifestyle, and beliefs all may influence perceptions. This study aimed to determine patient attitudes.
METHOD: Patients with a depressive disorder (n = 102) who were referred for psychiatric consultation and treatment to a community general hospitial psychiatric outpatient clinic completed a 9-item self-report questionnaire to determine their perceptions of the biological, psychological, cognitive, and spiritual causes of their depressive disorder.
RESULTS: Women were more likely to endorse their depressive disorder as related to a biological abnormality. With respect to age, older individuals were less likely to identify cognitive factors and loss of spirituality as causal factors in their depression.
CONCLUSIONS: A relation exists between demographic variables, including sex and age, and beliefs about causes of depression and related disorders. These findings have implications for refining patient psychoeducation.