Background: Depression is a common but poorly recognized disorder in primary care. Knowing risk factors related to depression can help doctors in diagnosing and treating depressive patients.
Methods: A random sample of 1643 individuals, aged 18 to 64, attending community health centres in Central Finland, took part in an inquiry with an instrument (the DEPS) measuring their depressiveness.
Results: Negative life events, poor physical health, poor marital or other interpersonal relationships, spouse's poor health, poor socio-economic and work situation and problems with alcohol were the major variables explaining the variance of depressive symptoms both in regression and discriminant analyses.
Conclusion: In the primary care patients, negative life events, poor physical health, poor marital or other interpersonal relationships, spouse's poor health, poor socio-economic and work situation and problems with alcohol indicate high risk for depression; they also often accumulate in the same patients. The connection between risk factors and depression is stronger in males than in females.
Limitation: The assessment of depression is based on the self-fulfilled scale and cannot, therefore, be directly generalized to clinical depression. Because of the cross-sectional study design, it is not possible to make any causal conclusion between risk factors and depression.
Clinical relevance: By paying attention to the most general risk factors of depression, general practitioners can become more sensitive in their recognition of depression.