Clinical characteristics of Major Depressive Disorder run in families – A community study of 933 mothers and their children

The familial aggregation of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) has been repeatedly demonstrated. Several studies have investigated associations between various clinical characteristics of MDD in probands and overall rates of MDD in relatives. Few studies, however, have considered the familial aggregation of clinical characteristics of MDD. The aim of the present report is to examine mother–offspring associations of a variety of clinical characteristics of MDD in a general population sample. Data were derived from baseline and 4-year-follow-up data of 933 adolescents and their biological mothers of the Early Developmental Stages of Psychopathology (EDSP) study, a prospective-longitudinal community study. MDD and its characteristics were assessed with the Munich-Composite International Diagnostic Interview. We found that children of mothers who had a lifetime history of severe MDD and high number of symptoms, high impairment and/or melancholia, revealed elevated odds of MDD regarding the same characteristics as their mothers (ORs between 5.2 and 13.9). The observed associations did not differ by the children’s sex. DSM-IV melancholia and severity as well as impairment were found to aggregate within families. This finding can be interpreted as a validation of the DSM-IV MDD severity subtypes as well as of the melancholic specifier. Severe and melancholic MDD reveal a considerable high degree of familiar aggregation making the search for mechanisms involved in the familiar transmission of these forms of MDD particularly promising.