title: Variability in lay perceptions of depression: a vignette study.
abstract: This paper describes a study investigating lay perceptions of depression in terms of perceived severity. Students (N = 128) were presented with vignettes describing individuals with symptoms of depression based on DSM-IV. The descriptions were varied in terms of gender, social status, and a self-referent manner of communicating depressive symptomatology. Participants were asked to rate the degree to which vignette characters were thought to be depressed on a Likert-type scale. Results indicate that a non-self-referent style of communicating depressive symptoms by female vignette characters was seen as an indication of elevated levels of depression, and these findings are discussed with reference to the literature.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Applied Social Psychology, University of Strathclyde, UK. s.d.heim@strath.ac.uk
authors.forename: Derek
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Heim
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Smallwood
authors.forename: John B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Davies
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D003863:Depression / Q000145:classification* / Q000523:psychology*; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011639:Public Opinion; D011897:Random Allocation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D019455:Self Psychology; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012737:Sex Factors; D012923:Social Class