‘Your good days and your bad days’ An exploration and consideration of how lay people conceptualize depression

This paper presents findings from one part of a research study exploring lay people’s beliefs and attitudes to mental disorder.

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  Twenty-two ‘lay people’ (i.e. people who did not have professional qualifications in mental health care), were interviewed.
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  The interviews used open-ended questions and a vignette describing a woman experiencing depression.

The findings of the study show that:

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  The people interviewed had a good understanding of depression. They were able to identify the symptoms of depression in the case study.
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  They were able to discuss depression at length, using either their own experiences of depression or through people they knew with the disorder.
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  Many people saw depression as ‘part of life’ and as a social condition as opposed to an illness.
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  The paper argues that lay people in this research study had a clear understanding of depression and that it was not a taboo or stigmatizing issue as is suggested in the prevailing literature.

Depression remains a significant public health issue globally; 121 million people are affected by depression health education campaigns. Regardless of the prevalence of depression and recent health education campaigns to reduce the burden of depression, many people are still stigmatized and sometimes excluded from the society in which they live. Using qualitative research, the aim of this study was to explore lay people’s perceptions and attitudes of mental disorder and in particular depression. A purposive sample of 22 lay people were each asked to read a case scenario which was then followed up by the researcher using open-ended questions to explore their knowledge and attitudes and beliefs relating to depression. The data was analysed using Braun & Clarke’s strategy of thematic analysis. The results revealed that many of the participants were familiar with the concept of depression, either through their own experiences of the disorder or through knowing people with depression. The participants also drew from psychosocial explanations of depression and located depression as part of the human condition. The paper suggests that lay people’s concepts of depression offer rich complex and diverse perspectives that enhance professional views and may lead to a greater understanding of uptake and acceptance of care for depression.