Exploring South African Indian men’s understanding of depression

South African Journal of Psychiatry

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Exploring South African Indian men’s understanding of depression
 
Creator Sithambaram, Vashnie Wagner, Claire Cassimjee, Nafisa
 
Subject Psychology depression; gender roles; societal expectations; stigmatisation; mental health awareness; coping; Indian men; South Africa.
Description Background: Depression is reported as one of the most common mental disorders. Research on Indian men’s understandings of depression is limited.Aim: The authors aimed to explore South African Indian men’s understanding of depression in a community, and how this guides help-seeking behaviour.Setting: Community dwelling participants in Gauteng, South Africa.Methods: An exploratory qualitative design was employed and a purposive sampling method was used to recruit participants. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven Indian adult men and analysed using thematic analysis.Results: The findings of this study yielded a total of six themes. These included understanding of depression, depression is taboo, diverging gender role expectations and depression, help-seeking behaviour, barriers to help-seeking, and mental health community support.Conclusion: The findings suggest a lack of understanding and awareness of depression among participants and discussions around mental illness being regarded as taboo. Gender roles and societal expectations were considered as one of the contributors to depression onset. Coping and help-seeking behaviour included adaptive and maladaptive coping mechanisms with professional psychological help being least prioritised. Self-stigmatisation and fear of discrimination were highlighted as barriers to help-seeking behaviours.Contribution: This study contributed to the limited body of knowledge on understanding of depression among Indian men in South Africa and highlighted the importance of mental health awareness campaigns and professional help-seeking behaviour.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2024-10-07
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Qualitative research
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v30i0.2300
 
Source South African Journal of Psychiatry; Vol 30 (2024); 7 pages 2078-6786 1608-9685
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/article/view/2300/3573 https://sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/article/view/2300/3574 https://sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/article/view/2300/3575 https://sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/article/view/2300/3576
 
Coverage Gauteng, South Africa 2022 Males; above 25 yeas
Rights Copyright (c) 2024 Vashnie Sithambaram, Claire Wagner, Nafisa Cassimjee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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