Lay accounts of depression amongst Anglo-Australian residents and East African refugees

Abstract

Layperson accounts of depression are gaining increasing prominence in the health research literature. This paper considers the accounts of lay people from a cross-cultural perspective. By exploring lay concepts of distress from Anglo-Australian, Ethiopian and Somali communities in Australia, we describe commonalities and divergences in understandings of depression. A total of 62 Anglo-Australians were interviewed, and 30 Somali and Ethiopians participated in focus groups and individual interviews. Anglo-Australian accounts frequently portray depression as an individual experience framed within narratives of personal misfortune, and which is socially isolating. In the accounts of distress fro..