Psychosocial factors, depression and illness

Abstract

This chapter describes the evidence for social and psychological factors playing a role in the aetiology of depression. Apart from gender differences, the most fundamental association between social factors and depression is the relationship with socioeconomic position (SEP) and the level of social disadvantage this connotes. Life events have been studied as the classical social risk factor for depression. The chapter focuses on depressive disorders and also includes landmark studies that have used the broader categories that illustrate the role of psychosocial variables. Two psychological mechanisms have been postulated for the beneficial effect of social relations on mental health: support has a direct effect on wellbeing; and the buffering hypothesis, whereby support moderates the impact of stressors on the risk of depression. Ethnicity is considered to be a key explanatory concept within the context of health variations in mental illness.

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