First-year nursing students' accounts of reasons for student depression.
This study used content analysis and hermeneutics to examine 53 first-year nursing students' surmised reasons for their own or their peers' experiences of feeling down or depressed. Study data were confidential e-mail responses (n = 53) to the question, "If you or another student you know has been feeling down or depressed, can you describe a reason?" Content analysis reflected respondents' sense of their own relatedness to the experience; a general sense of awareness of the occurrence of feeling down or depressed among students; suggested reasons, from general to specific, for those experiences among students; and sense of ownership, from self to others to individuals unspecified, as they described the experience of feeling down or depressed among first-year college students. Hermeneutic analysis revealed seven themes characterizing student experiences of feeling down or depressed. The authors address the context of depression frequently associated with college student life.
Dzurec
Laura Cox
LC
Kent State University, College of Nursing, Henderson Hall, P.O. Box 5190, Kent, OH 44242, USA. ldzurec@kent.edu
Allchin
Lynn
L
Engler
Arthur J
AJ
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D015984:Causality; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology*; D004508:Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008132:Loneliness; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D010379:Peer Group; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D020377:Self Efficacy; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012934:Social Isolation; D012944:Social Support; D013338:Students, Nursing / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016526:Workload / Q000523:psychology