Editorial: mood disorders in families: ways to discovery

'And how about your son?', I asked. We were on the Brixton adult ward, where the carpets were stained, cigarette smoke still saturated the air, and most patients were held on sections of the Mental Health Act. She replied 'He is not well, hasn't been for a while, he's taken after me'. The statement was matter of fact, stripped of affect. She was a 51-year-old woman with chronic depression and it was my first day as a psychiatry trainee. She had several more relatives with some form of mental illness, and she told me about them with the same flatness, inducing an empathetic vicarious void in me.