Association of depressive phenotype with affective family history is mediated by affective temperaments

Increasing data support an association of cyclothymic temperament with bipolarity, but our knowledge about the relationship of affective temperaments (ATs) to depressive symptoms based on inheritance in a non-clinical population is limited. The aim of this article was to demonstrate how ATs and affective family history relate to the depressive symptoms in a general population. Subjects comprised 501 Hungarian adults who completed a background questionnaire, the TEMPS-A, the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (ZSDS) and the depression subscale of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI-D). Stepwise linear regression was performed to analyse the role of ATs and affective family history (AFH0 and AFH1) in the variance of ZSDS and BSI-D scores. Cyclothymic, depressive and anxious temperaments have a significant role in the explained variance of depression scores, and they are all significantly related to AFH1. Significant differences were found between AFH1 and AFH0 groups in ZSDS and BSI-D scores, and these effects were eliminated if ATs were entered as covariates. The probability of having any dominant temperament was more than two-fold in group AFH1 compared with AFH0 (OR = 2.33). Our results suggest that a crucial part of inherited factors of depression is mediated by affective temperaments.