Depression from a cultural viewpoint: new research

Research attempting to understand depression among migrant and Indigenous communities has recently got underway at Murdoch University’s School of Psychology.

The $276,000 Healthway funded project, a three-year collaborative effort between Murdoch University and the Eastern Perth Public and Community Health Unit, is an attempt to understand how other cultures view unhappiness – what causes it, how to deal with it, and when it becomes a problem.

“It was time to challenge the Western biomedical model of depression” said Dr Mark Rapley, Senior Lecturer in Psychology.

“The study has been designed to investigate alternative understandings of feelings of unhappiness, and solutions other than pharmacological ones.”

The question of how to define depression is particularly relevant to refugees, who may have undergone terrible suffering in their homeland or during their journey to Australia.

“As Australia becomes more multicultural it is important that health services are provided in a culturally appropriate manner,” says Dr Farida Tilbury, coordinator of the project.

“We are trying to understand how members of different ethnic communities see depression. It is likely that some cultures may not define unhappiness as necessarily bad, so when a doctor or a health promotion pamphlet tells people they should seek help if they feel unhappy, it is unlikely people will respond. We may find we need to change our definitions of ‘normal’ mental states.

“We will also be looking at the current tendency to medicate to improve mental states.”

The research will involve discussions, in the form of focus groups and interviews, with members of a number of different ethnic groups, including Somali, Sudanese, Bosnian, Croatian, Chinese, Ethiopian and Eritrean, and Indigenous Australians.

Analysis of health promotion materials will also be undertaken, and recommendations fed back to the State Government about how to improve mental health services.