There is growing international interest in cross-cultural research of depressed patients to contribute to the aetiology discussion of the disorder and to find culture specific treatment strategies.

The aim of this study is to investigate the psychodynamic conflicts and structures of Chinese and German depressed patients and their influence on symptomatology.

A total of 111, SCID-I assessed depressed patients (57 Chinese and 64 German patients) were included in this study. the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the conflict and the structure axes of the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics (OPD-2) were applied for evaluating the severity of the symptomatology and the psychodynamic profiles, respectively.

After controlling socioeconomic factors (age, gender, familial status and employment) German patients compared with Chinese patients showed significantly lower BDI total scores (24.16 ± 8.67 vs. 28.66 ± 11.01, p < 0.05). in terms of the OPD-2 parameters, German patients suffered from more frequent conflicts like the “desire for care vs. self-sufficiency conflict” (1.84 ± 1.13 vs. 1.12 ± 1.07, p < 0.01) as well as the “guilt conflict” (1.02 ± 0.85 vs. 0.65 ± 0.95, p < 0.05). in contrast, we found more frequent “dependence vs. individuation” conflicts in the Chinese sample compared with German patients (1.21 ± 1.19 vs. 0.78 ± 0.98, p < 0.05). there was no relationship between the psychodynamic profiles and the symptoms’ severity.

The findings suggest more culture specific psychodynamic psychotherapy strategies for depressed patients coming from different countries and cultures.