Let's take a quick look at the role of genes in depression. Are you more likely to get depressed if you have a relative with depression or a family history of depression? The short answer is yes. If you have a sibling who's had depression, or you have a parent who's had depression, then you're two to three times more likely to get depression than the average person.💙

And the average person has about a 10% risk of getting depression. Therefore, if you have a close family relative with depression, your risk being two to three times greater is say 20 to 30%. This actually increases if the depression that the relative has had started earlier in life, or if they've had many recurrent episodes.💙

So that's more of a stronger signal. There's not actually a depression gene as such, it's more likely that there are multiple genes involved that create a kind of susceptibility to depression. The hereditability of depression and anxiety is actually less than for other mental illnesses.💙

So for depression, it's about 50%. And for something like ADHD, it's more like 70 to 80%. And for bipolar depression, it's like 70 to 80%. So the contribution of genetics seems to be less for depression and anxiety than it is for those other mental illnesses.💙