Attitudes of patients attending a psychiatric outpatient clinic towards depression

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge and attitudes of patients attending a psychiatric outpatient clinic towards depression and factors that influenced them. Methods: This study is carried out on patients who attending Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic of Celal Bayar University Hospital. The study was carried out in 200 subjects who have been selected by systematic sampling method. In this study, a 32-item questionnaire designed for rating the attitudes toward depression by PAREM (Psychiatric Research and Education Centre) was used by adding one item to find out the attitudes toward depression. In addition, a 8-item sociodemographic questionnaire designed by authors and a 5-item questionnaire which was designed by authors and included the patients knowledge and opinions about their illness and illness characteristics of patients were applied. Results: Most of the subjects (83.5%) believed that "depression due to social problems". Half of subjects stated that they would not get married with a person with depression (50.5%). Twenty-eight of subjects stated that patients with depression might be aggressive. The patients suffering from a depressive episode toward depression answered the items "Mrs. F. has a somatic disease" (p=0.030), "Persons with depression don't recover completely" (p=0.003) and "persons with depression are aggressive" (p=0.029) as "I agree" more than the patients not suffering from a depressive episode; but answered the items "I can work with a person with depression" (p=0.004) and "I would get married to a person with depression" as "I agree" less than the patients not suffering from a depressive episode. Conclusions: Psychiatric outpatients have more correct knowledge than lay people about depression and treatment of depression. Most of the patients believed that depression is associated with social problems. Attitudes of the psychiatric outpatients toward patient with depression are more positive and more tolerant than lay people. However, patients with depressive episode have more negative and discriminative attitudes toward patients with depression and desire for social distance from patients with depression. (Anatolian Journal of Psychiatry 2009; 10: 100-108)