Frequency of phenomenology in depressive illness

Objective: to compare the frequency of depressive symptoms in both genders among the depressive patients at a psychiatric clinic of tertiary care hospital. study design: cross sectional study setting: department of psychiatry,jinnah post graduate medical center,karachi. duration: six months (nov-2006 to may 2007) subjects and methods: a sample of 100 new consecutive patients including both the genders coming to the researcher's consulting room was assessed for caseness of depression. diagnosis was made by using icd-10 diagnostic criteria for research. diagnosed patients were then seen for the severity of illness by rating them on hamilton rating scale for depression (hrsd). results: analysis indicated that among the psychological symptoms,feeling sad was the most common seen in 34% of the patients. in males,compared to females,hopelessness and lack of confidence was predominant (11.8% vs 1.5%),while high proportions of females,compared to male patients,complaint of irritability (27.3% vs 8.8%) and feeling like crying all the time (34.8% vs 14.7%). among the somatic complaints headache was the most common reported by 39% of patients,which was significantly higher in females than males (47.0 vs 23.5%). conclusion: men and women in this study reported similar patterns and severity symptoms of depression. no evidence that presentation of depressive symptoms differs by gender was found. understanding of phenomenology is a major tool to aid in early detection and diagnosis of depression.