Patients' perspective on self-management in the recovery from depression.

Background: Self-management appears to be a promising approach in the case of depression, which helps to stimulate patients' autonomy. However, a good and systematic description of the concept self-management from the patients' perspective, to our knowledge, has not yet been performed.

Objective: To determine: (i) what strategies patients think they can use themselves to recover from depression, (ii) which main themes of self-management strategies can be detected, and (iii) which of these strategies patients perceive as being most helpful.

[Patients' perspective on self-management during recovery from depression].

Objective: To investigate what patients themselves think they can contribute to recovery from depression, and what they find to be effective. The patients' perspective is necessary to improve treatment for depression.

Design: Qualitative, hypothesis-generating study.