Some Familial and Social Factors in Depressive Illness

¹ Lecturer in Psychiatry, University of Leeds.

This article presents the findings of a study on certain familial, social and demographic factors in depressive illness. A group of 153 inpatients suffering from primary depressive illness and a matched series of 163 non-psychiatric control individuals were compared by means of data obtained from a standardized interview. The following results were obtained:

1. Depressives belong to sibships which are of the same size as the sibships of normal individuals.

2. It is shown that moderately severe depressives, but not severe depressives, are significantly more likely than normal to belong to the middle of the sibship and significantly less likely to be the youngest member of the family.

3. There is no evidence that the parents of depressives are older or younger than average at the time the depressive offspring is born.

4. Depressives report a positive family history of severe mental disorder to a significantly greater extent than normals. However, there is no significant difference between the severe and moderately severe depressives as to the frequency of a positive family history, and this suggests that, while the tendency to affective illness may be hereditarily determined, the degree of severity of the condition may depend on other factors.

5. Depressives appear, on the whole, to be less likely than average to marry, and this finding is largely accounted for by a significant excess of the celibate among depressives whose illness has begun after the age of 45 years.

6. Depressive illness seems to have no marked affect on the childbearing capacity of married depressive individuals.

7. Depressive illness appears to occur with much the same frequency at all socio-economic levels of the community.

The significance of these findings is discussed.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				A. L. Malizia and P. K. Bridges The management of treatment-resistant affective disorder: clinical perspectives J Psychopharmacol, January 1, 1992; 6(2): 145 - 155. [PDF]