Causal attributions in first-degree relatives of depressed and agoraphobic inpatients.

Causal attributions in 77 first-degree relatives of major depressed, agoraphobic, major depressed and agoraphobic (comorbid), and dysthymic inpatients were studied. The hypothesis that the relatives of comorbid and dysthymic patients should exhibit more "depressogenic" causal attributions for bad events than the relatives of major depressed and agoraphobic patients was partly supported. Relatives of dysthymic patients attributed bad events to more internal causes and assigned more importance to the events themselves than did relatives of major depressed patients. Relatives of patients with major depression and agoraphobia comorbidity attributed bad events to more internal causes than did the relatives of major depressed patients. Statistically controlling for differences in sex, age, social class, and depressive symptom level did not significantly alter the results among the four groups.