Recurrently situational (reactive) depression: A study of course, phenomenology and familial psychopathology

Probands with non-bipolar major depressive disorder (MDD) were grouped according to the consistency across episodes with which depression appeared to arise from situational factors. Situational depression showed significant diagnostic stability across the second and third recurrences in a 10-year follow-up. The relatives of recurrently situational probands had higher neuroticism scores, higher lifetime rates of MDD and, when depressed, fewer endogenous symptoms than did the relatives of non-situational probands. This study joins two others in finding an association between stress-related depression and high familial loadings for MDD. It also illustrates the value of diagnostic consistency across episodes as a means of refining groups for the study of diagnostic subtypes.