Physical contact experience and depression.

Abstract

Out of a consideration of the relevance of interpersonal physical contact to mental health is developed the hypothesis that unsatisfactory physical contact experience predisposes to depression. This hypothesis is then systematically explored using self-ratings of depression and physical contact (and love) experience obtained on admission and at discharge from 254 unselected psychiatric in-patients. Following the demonstration of a strong association between unsatisfactory physical contact experience and depression a significant relationship is also found between depression and the experience of being not loved. These two relationships are shown to exist independently of one another and when direction of causation is investigated both unsatisfactory physical contact experience and the experience of being not loved are seen to be causal of depression rather than vice versa. Unsatisfactory physical contact experience, however, clearly has the greater utility as an indicator of depression-proneness. Different categories and different kinds of physical contact experience are explored, first in relation to depression generally and then to each of the three major forms of depressive illness. Considered too is the patterning of physical contact experience and love experience for each of these latter. The results suggest that depression generally tends to be more closely linked with stable than unstable unsatisfactory physical contact experience and with present rather than childhood such experience. In addition endogenous depression is seen to be characterised by an absence of any physical contact experience in the present, while manic-depressive psychosis combines unsatisfactory physical contact experience with the experience of being loved and shows a relative lack of exclusively bad physical contact experience in childhood. Reactive depression, however, emerges with no distinguishing features of this kind. There follows an examination of the relationships between unsatisfactory physical contact experience and those psychiatric conditions other than depression represented in the subject sample. This raises the possibility that unsatisfactory physical contact experience could also be closely linked with schizophreniform disorder and adjustment disorder. Finally it is suggested that, above all, physical contact experience may be a major determinant of the capacity to cope with stress. Unsatisfactory such experience might then be predisposing to a wide range of psychiatric disorders, with depression seen as a commonly occurring symptom of inadequate coping.