Page No.239-244
Sibnath Deb and Anjana Bhattacharjee
University of Calcutta, Kolkata
Depression is a strong mood involving sadness, discouragement, despair or
hopelessness that lasts for weeks, months or even longer. People with depression
tend to have negative and self-critical thoughts. The broad objective of the present
study was to ascertain the self-esteem of depressive patients. A group of 118
depressive patients was covered in the study and they were selected from different
Government and Private Health Care Centers following incidental sampling
technique. Data were collected by Background Information Schedule and Self
Esteem Inventory. Three hypotheses were formulated and were verified by applying
suitable statistical tests. Findings revealed that self esteem of depressive patients
and normal population of same age group differed significantly (P<0.01) which
indicates that depressive patients have low self-esteem. Again findings revealed
that self-esteem of male and female depressive patients of same age group also
differed significantly(P<0.01), which indicates that male depressive patients possess
high self-esteem than those of female depressive patient Further, Self esteem of
depressive patients across chronicity of the disease also differed significantly
(P<0.01) which indicates that the depressive patients who were suffering from
depression for more than last one year possessed low self esteem as compared
to the depressive patients who were suffering from depression for the last one
year