First-year nursing students' accounts of reasons for student depression

This study used content analysis and hermeneutics to examine 53 first-year nursing students' surmised reasons for their own or their peers' experiences of feeling down or depressed. Study data were confidential e-mail responses (n = 53) to the question, "If you or another student you know has been feeling down or depressed, can you describe a reason?" Content analysis reflected respondents' sense of their own relatedness to the experience; a general sense of awareness of the occurrence of feeling down or depressed among students; suggested reasons, from general to specific, for those experiences among students; and sense of ownership, from self to others to individuals unspecified, as they described the experience of feeling down or depressed among first-year college students. Hermeneutic analysis revealed seven themes characterizing student experiences of feeling down or depressed. The authors address the context of depression frequently associated with college student life.