Monitoring awareness of and attitudes to depression in Australia

Nicole J. Highet · Ian Bernard Hickie · Tracey A Davenport

112 citations0/0 files storedThe Medical Journal of Australia

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Mental Health Treatment and Access Psychology and Mental Health Psychological Treatments and Disorders

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To determine the degree of recognition and understanding of depression and its treatments in Australia in 2001, and detail factors and personal experiences that influence awareness of and attitudes to depression. DESIGN AND SETTING: Cross-sectional survey of a representative community sample (900 randomly selected respondents), via telephone interview, conducted 5-7 October 2001. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Reports of community awareness, knowledge and attitudes to depression and its treatments in Australia. RESULTS: The Australian community does not view mental health as a major general health issue. When asked specifically, depression was recognised as the most common mental health problem. Recognition of depression was greater among women and younger people. Most people (58%; 508/879) reported that they or a family member had experienced depression. People younger than 55 years and people with personal or family experiences of depression viewed depression as more disabling than other chronic medical conditions. Half the respondents differentiated depression from normal sadness. Awareness of common risk versus protective factors was limited. Most people endorsed a preference for self-help and non-pharmacological treatments, but community views of antidepressant drugs were less negative than expected. General practitioners were identified as the preferred point of first contact among healthcare professionals. CONCLUSIONS: Although mental health is still not highlighted as a major health issue, Australians do recognise depression as the major mental health problem. Women and younger people have more substantial knowledge about key aspects of depression and its treatments.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 112 citations exist upstream.

References

1997“Mental health literacy”: a survey of the public's ability to recognise mental disorders and their beliefs about the effectiveness of treatment 2001Prevalence, comorbidity, disability and service utilisation 2000Australia's Mental Health: An Overview of the General Population Survey 2001Should depression be managed as a chronic disease?1997Helpfulness of interventions for mental disorders: Beliefs of health professionals compared with the general public 1997Population-based care of depression: Effective disease management strategies to decrease prevalence 2000Recent trends in the use of antidepressant drugs in Australia, 1990–1998 2001Mental health literacy: an impediment to the optimum treatment of major depression in the community

Cited by

2009Older Adults Are Less Accurate Than Younger Adults at Identifying Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression 2005Australian mental health reform: time for real outcomes 2008Randomized study of different anti-stigma media 2004Can we Reduce the Burden of Depression? The Australian experience with Beyondblue: The National Depression Initiative

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.