Am J Psychiatry 1991; 148:184-188
Copyright © 1991 by American Psychiatric Association
Familial alcoholism in primary unipolar major depressive disorder
G Winokur and W Coryell
Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City 52242.
OBJECTIVE: Some studies have suggested relationships between depression in
probands and alcoholism in relatives. Other studies have not, but some of
these have used inappropriate control groups or failed to divide probands
by sex. METHOD: The present study controlled for sex of probands and used
several comparison groups to further explore the familial relationship
between depression and alcoholism. Diagnoses for 723 directly interviewed
relatives of 326 probands with primary unipolar depression were compared to
diagnoses in 469 control subjects chosen by an acquaintanceship method to
demographically resemble the relatives of affective disorder probands.
Diagnoses in the uninterviewed relatives of both control and depressed
subjects were used for comparisons as well. RESULTS: Results indicated
higher rates of alcoholism in the families of depressed women but not in
the families of depressed men. CONCLUSIONS: This familial association
between alcoholism and depression may be the result of either genetic or
environmental factors or an interaction between the two.
