Why Some People Get Depressed Under Stress, While Others Don't

More evidence for the traditional view that biology and environment interact to cause many psychiatric disorders:

Mice with brains that lack a protein important in the normal response to stress develop symptoms that look like major depressive disorder in humans.

The study is in the online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The gold-standard pharmacotherapy for depression, imipramine, "normalized" the symptoms.

Thus, the evidence just continues to mount suggesting genetics make some people more vulnerable to depression in the face of a major life stress.

Indeed, the Wash U researchers apparently plan to search for a gene that is related to the problem protein, hoping that would help identify more effective antidepressants.