Common-sense descriptions of depression as social representations

Major depression is such a prevalent illness worldwide that practically everyone has either direct or indirect experience of it. It is important, then, from both practical and theoretical points of view, to examine this particular experience and related conceptions.

Drawing on the theory of social representations, this research set out to examine the ways in which people define depression in terms of the symptoms they attribute to people they know personally and consider to suffer from depression.

A group of adult participants (n = 117) were instructed to think of an individual whom they knew personally and considered to suffer from depression, to indicate the age and gender of the person, and to describe his/her symptoms.

A great majority of the female participants thought of a female, while the male participants thought of male and female target persons quite evenly. The symptoms attributed to depression with fair unanimity included fatigue and decreased capacity to work, to concentrate, to make decisions and to take part in hobbies. The descriptions of the depressive person were quite unanimously distinguished from the signal symptoms attaching to schizophrenia. The descriptions varied according to the characteristics of the target individuals, and their gender and age in particular, rather than the characteristics of the participants.

People have perceptive personal experiences of depression, which are guided by socially shared interpretative frameworks.