[Contribution of genetics to research in the etiology of depressive diseases].

The familial aggregation of depressive disorders is a major cue for the etiology of depression. The review of family, twin, adoption and linkage studies demonstrates that genetic transmission is involved in the manifestation of bipolar affective disorders but it explains only part of the variance; the evidence of a genetic basis of unipolar depression is less clear; this is the case for endogenous depression, too. It ist recommended to examine if personality features may contribute to an improvement in the identification of the phenotype in genetic studies in unipolar and bipolar depression.