Depression in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a common yet poorly understood phenomenon. This research adopted a biopsychosocial model in which pain and family support were hypothesized to predict depressive symptoms directly, and indirectly, through perceived helplessness. A total of 44 confirmed SLE patients recruited through the community completed a set of questionnaires in a cross‐sectional, correlation design. The results confirmed our model's applicability, demonstrating that high pain and high helplessness independently contributed to depression; however, the contribution of family support was not significant. While mixed support was found for a pain‐learned helplessness link, helplessness mediated the effects of patients' socio‐economic status on depression such that patients of lower socio‐economic status reported greater helplessness in the face of their illness. In summary, the data indicate that pain and helplessness are important concomitants of SLE‐related depression. Longitudinal research is recommended to clarify the relationships among these variables over time in clinical samples.
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Tayer et al. (1996) studied this question.