title: Features of families with major affective disorders.
abstract: This article reports the authors' observations on 22 families in which a young adult member has been diagnosed as manic-depressive, and on 11 families in which a member has been diagnosed as suffering from major schizoaffective disorder. All families could be described as extremely rigid and bound-up systems. Many of them were characterized by a "restrictive parental complementarity" and reciprocal delegation, and they shared certain cognitive features and assumptions. "Manic-depressive" families showed similarities as well as differences when compared with families in which there were schizophrenic and serious psychosomatic disorders.
mesh_terms: D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D005190:Family; D006801:Humans; D007207:Individuation; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D012801:Sibling Relations; D012931:Social Environment