Is depression caused by nature or nurture? The general public believes that depression is caused by both natural and cultural factors. Most of the public believed that education had a greater influence on whether or not the person suffered from depression. Unipolar depression occurs when a person is always in a very low mood and would last at least 2 weeks to be fully diagnosed as depression. A person suffering from unipolar depression usually does not see the bright side of things. Bipolar depression occurs when a person has sudden mood swings from a very low mood to a sudden high mood, bipolar depression is more difficult to diagnose than unipolar depression. Depression is believed to involve many genes. Biological psychologists believe that a person usually develops depression due to genetic factors. Family history is a very important piece of evidence for doctors to check when linking to the diagnosis of depression as family history will show if depressive illness runs through families which may have been inherited. Weissman found that about 50% of children whose parents also experienced depressive symptoms also develop depression. This is a large number to inherit depression from, so this shows that genetics play an important role in the development of depression. Many twin studies have also shown results that genetically identical (MZ) twins have a higher rate of inherited depression than non-identical (DZ) twins. ). For example, an experiment conducted by Prince in 1968 predicted that MZ twins would have higher concordance for depression than DZ twins. The findings found were that MZ twins raised in the same environment/family showed 68% concordance and DZ twins had 28% lower concordance for bipolar disorder only. This is evident... halfway through the article... the so-called cortisol shows large differences in people with depression. Benefits There are now many medications that have evidence that they work efficiently and successfully, however there is also evidence that depression cannot be completely cured because sometimes if the right amount of medication is not taken the depression can return as antidepressants They don't work on everyone. There is much evidence (Wender, Weissman, McGuffin) to support the fact that MZ twins who have the same genetics have a greater concordance of developing depression than DZ twins who have different genetics. Disadvantages Biologists ignore the fact that depression can be due to upbringing, for example psychodynamic psychologists believe that people who develop depression may have had a bad childhood, so bad childhood experiences influence the person's adulthood.