Sociocultural and psychopathological study on depressive disorders among Japanese

In order to find out whether there is a change in depression itself besides the increase of depression, we made a research by two methods. The first method is what we can call a statistical method, and here we made a comparative examination of the symptoms of depression having different sociocultural backgrounds by examining 114 cases of depression in Tokyo and 108 in Nagasaki. By the second method we divided the 24 cases of depression in Tokyo into two groups, "patients grown up during the prewar period" and "patients grown up during the postwar period", according to the date of their birth, and analyzed the precipitating factors (life events) of depression and psychopathology. As a result, we can infer that while the depression in Tokyo is of an urban type, the depression in Nagasaki is of a classical type, and as for the life events, "patients grown up during the prewar period" tend to be involved in the family/household and social network events whereas "patients grown up during the postwar period" tend to be involved in the personal and livelihood events, and here we can observe a significant statistical difference between the two groups. Furthermore, we found out that the life events of the "patients grown up during the postwar period" were limited to the personal interests and that they rarely suffered from self-reproach or feeling of guilt.