Depressive Symptoms in the general population: a multifactorial social approach.

Abstract

This book aims to provide a more systematic theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationships between social factors and depressive symptoms in the general population. A multifactorial social approach has been applied to study depressive symptoms in the general population more profoundly, using several perspectives: a longitudinal perspective, a static and a dynamic perspective, a contextual perspective and an explanatory perspective. Theoretical progress has been attained in this study by using a theoretical framework in which these perspectives have been incorporated and from which hypotheses have been derived on differences in people's levels of resources that account for suffering from depressive symptoms. Testing several indicators of resources simultaneously in a large-scale research design, has lead to empirical progress. The multivariate analyses were done using survey data of the national and the regional general population. The results show the importance of a simultaneous test of different social factors that induce depressive symptoms in the general population