Data from the South Verona Psychiatric Case Register were used to test hypotheses about the relationship between age, gender, marital status and the incidence of treated affective disorders. Analysis of the 5-year period 1983-1987 yielded overall rates of affective disorder per 10(5) of 57.7 for males and 78.4 for women. Incidence increased with age both for depressive neurosis and for affective psychosis. Married women had high rates compared with their single counterparts whereas the reverse was true for men. The very low values for incidence are likely to reflect the major role in the treatment of affective disorders carried out by Italian general practitioners, rather than a low population rate of these disorders.