Pessimistic explanatory style and lack of agency characterise the narratives of depressive patients

BACKGROUND: According to the cognitive model of depression, depression entails certain cognitive biases. These occur when explaining life events: depressive patients tend to attribute negative life events to internal, stable and global reasons. Moreover depressive patients presumably experience themselves as passive sufferers rather than active agents of events. AIMS: The study explored some typical cognitive biases of depressive patients as appearing in their personal narratives. Specifically, it focused on the explanatory style and the sense of agency. As both narrative methods are unknown in Hungary so far, the study describes them in detail as well. METHOD: Altogether 108 narratives of 16 depressive patients and 15 healthy people were analyzed. The attribution style was analyzed by the CAVE (Content Analysis of Verbatim Expressions) method, which explores the attribution style of the narratives in three dimensions: locus (internal-external), stability (stable-instable) and pervasiveness (global-specific). The sense of agency was assessed by using a self-developed narrative method. RESULTS: It was found that when explaining positive life events, depressive patients referred to external reasons significantly more frequently than to internal reasons, and they tended to explain negative life events with global reasons. There was no difference between the two groups in any other attribution. Furthermore, depressive patients tended to describe themselves as being only passive sufferers or recipients of events, in contrast with members of the control group who appeared more as active agents in their narratives. CONCLUSIONS: Lack of agency and pessimistic explanatory style characterised depressive patients as opposed to healthy persons. Results suggest that negative life events could be both the reasons and the consequences of depressive world view.