Our sample was composed of 29 bipolar patients (BP), 35 unipolar patients (UP), and 34 controls (CT). The patients were selected from the population of major affective disorder outpatients of St. Paul’s Hospital in Milan. All patients were diagnosed in accordance with DSM-HI criteria (9). The controls were se-lected from among the medical in- and outpatients of the same hospital, none of them ever having had any previous psychiatric illness. The presence or absence of personality disorders was independently assessed У two senior psychiatrists, who employed a semistructured interview that in­corporated the criteria for Axis II of DSM-III. We ruled out from the analysis all patients and controls for whom accordance of diagnosis was not reached. Before beginning the interview, both the affective patients (who were symptom free) and controls were instructed to respond in the context of their "normal" state. The patients were asked not to take account of recent episodes of depression or mania. Similarly, the controls were asked not to think about unusually stressful situations. This was done in order to minimize misdiagnoses of their respective personality characteristics (26). We collected information about the presence of affective disorders in 376 first-degree relatives and in 870 second-degree relatives using Family History (7) directly from the patients and controls and when possible from the first-degree relatives themselves. Relatives who had had a diagnosis of Major Affective Dis­orders, both bipolar and unipolar, Cyclothymic and Dysthymic Disorders, and Atypical Depression (all according to DSM-III) were considered to be affected. All data about the relatives were corrected for age (14,16). Nevertheless, off­spring of first- and second-degree relatives were excluded because of their far too young mean ages. Since the aim of this preliminary study was to see whether the presence of a personality disorder, regardless of type, could differentially affect the risk of dis­orders in families, we applied different statistical analyses (19,20), carried out on the Sperry Univac 1100/80 computer of Milan University, to our data about both the first- and second-degree relatives of the whole study sample (BP, UP patients, and controls). The familial risk was tested against the presence or absence of personality disorders, sex, study subgroup classification, age at onset for pa­tients, and the type of familial relationship (parents/siblings, grandparents/aunts, uncles).

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