of antidepressants or who had been referred to a secondary psychiatric care centre (n = 1 072) were excluded, as were cases who had received a previous diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder (n = 47). This resulted in 2603 depression cases (of which 1289 were recurrent) and 16,122 controls. Stratification by sex resulted in 1859 female cases, 9159 female controls, 770 male cases and 6958 male controls.
