Morbid risks for major disorders and frequencies of personality disorders among spouses of psychiatric inpatients and controls.

Three hundred fifty-three psychiatric inpatients and their 192 living spouses and 98 control subjects and their 54 living spouses were examined and interviewed for affective, schizoaffective, schizophrenic (Research Diagnostic Criteria [RDC]), and personality disorders (DSM-III-R) using the Lifetime Version of the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS-L) and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-Personality Disorders (SCID). The morbid risks of spouses for unipolar depression were between .15 and .25, and those for other major disorders were below .03. The morbid risks of spouses of bipolar patients for unipolar depression exceeded those of other spouses by 50% without reaching statistical significance. Personality disorders were found in 44.6% of patients, in 8.4% of patients' spouses, and in 9.8% of healthy controls. There was only one couple in which the husband and wife had each had a major disorder before marriage. Only four husband-wife pairs suffered the same personality disorder. Spouses of patients do not have significantly more psychiatric disorders than healthy controls; therefore, assortative mating can only be of minor relevance in family studies.