Premium
Marital Interaction and Depressed Women **
Author(s) -
Heins Terry
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
australian journal of family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1467-8438
pISSN - 0156-8779
DOI - 10.1002/j.1467-8438.1982.tb00157.x
Subject(s) - spouse , feeling , affection , psychology , depressive symptoms , clinical psychology , psychiatry , depression (economics) , marital status , medicine , cognition , social psychology , sociology , anthropology , economics , macroeconomics , population , environmental health
Most people diagnosed as depressed are currently married. The interaction of depressed patients with their spouses can contribute to the understanding of depressive syndromes. Questionnaires show promise of being a useful method of assessing marital interaction. From a questionnaire and interview study involving 75 psychiatric patients and 46 non‐patients, a group of 22 married women inpatients with a depressive illness was matched by age to a group of 22 married women attending a family planning clinic. The depressed women were more likely to perceive their marriage as having less emotional involvement, fewer positive expressions of affection and more negative feelings and to perceive their husbands as dominating. These results broadly confirm previous studies. Hafner's spouse‐aided therapy may be the most useful type of family therapy approach for depressed women.