The Iowa 500: Follow-up of 225 Depressives

Abstract

In previous studies we have suggested that there are two types of depressive illness (4, 5). The first of these is depressive spectrum disease which has as its prototype the early-onset female depressive; the second type is pure depressive disease, the prototype of which is the late-onset male depressive. Other family studies support the differences between these two prototypes (1, 8). The early-onset females have a considerable amount of alcoholism and probably sociopathy in their male first-degree relatives. The late-onset males have an ordinary amount of these illnesses in their male relatives. In the families of early-onset females, female relatives outnumber male relatives for the presence of depressive illness; this is not seen in late-onset males, where male and female relatives have equal amounts of depressive illness.