Public Knowledge and Beliefs About Depression Among Urban and Rural Malays in Malaysia

Viren Swami, Phik-Wern Loo and Adrian Furnham
Additional contact information
Viren Swami: Department of Psychology, University of Westminster, London, UK, virenswami@hotmail.com
Phik-Wern Loo: Department of Psychology, University College London, London, UK
Adrian Furnham: Department of Psychology, University College London, London, UK

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2010, vol. 56, issue 5, 480-496

Abstract: Background: This study examined knowledge and beliefs about depression among Malaysian Malays varying in socioeconomic status. Methods: A total of 153 urban and 189 rural participants completed a questionnaire in which they had to identify two cases of depression and rate a series of items about the causes and best treatments for depression. Results: Results showed that urban participants were more likely to use psychiatric labels (‘depression’) for the two vignettes, whereas rural participants tended to use more generic terms (‘emotional stress’). Conclusion: Principal components analysis (PCA) showed that beliefs about the causes of depression factored into five components, of which stressful life events was most strongly endorsed by both groups. PCA of treatment items revealed four stable components, of which religious factors were most strongly endorsed. There were also a number of significant between-group differences in the endorsement of these factors (η p 2 = .03—.11), with rural participants generally rating supernatural and religious factors more strongly than urban Malays. These results are discussed in relation to mental health literacy programmes in Malaysia.

Keywords: depression; mental health literacy; Malaysia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020764008101639 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:56:y:2010:i:5:p:480-496

DOI: 10.1177/0020764008101639

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().