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Abstract
Objective To explore how South Asian origin women in Toronto, Canada, understand and explain the causes of their depression.
Design Cross-sectional in-depth qualitative interviews.
Setting Outpatient service in Toronto, Ontario.
Participants Ten women with symptoms of depression aged between 22 and 65 years of age. Seven were from India, two from Sri Lanka and one from Pakistan. Four were Muslim, three Hindu and three Catholic. Two participants had university degrees, one a high school diploma and seven had completed less than a high school education. Eight were married, one was unmarried and one a widow.
Results Three main factors emerged from the participant narratives as the causes of depression: family and relationships, culture and migration and socioeconomic. The majority of the participants identified domestic abuse, marital problems and interpersonal problems in the family as the cause of their depression. Culture and migration and socioeconomic factors were considered contributory. None of our study participants reported spiritual, supernatural or religious factors as causes of depression.
Conclusion A personal–social–cultural model emerged as the aetiological paradigm for depression. Given the perceived causation, psycho-social treatment methods may be more acceptable for South Asian origin women.
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Footnotes
To cite: Ekanayake S, Ahmad F, McKenzie K. Qualitative cross-sectional study of the perceived causes of depression in South Asian origin women in Toronto. BMJ Open 2012;2:e000641. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000641
Contributors All the authors designed and implemented the study. SE assisted with data collection. SE, FA and KM performed the statistical analysis. All authors contributed to drafts and approved the final draft of the manuscript. All authors had full access to the data in the study and can take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
Funding This research was supported by a strategic training grant (grant number TUF 96115) from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research provided for the Social Aetiology of Mental Illness Training Program.
Competing interests None.
Ethics approval Ethics approval was obtained from the Research Ethics Board of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Ontario, prior to the recruitment.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement Our qualitative data are not available to be shared as we did not consent patients for data sharing when the study was undertaken.