In the past it was reported in several studies that both depressive and schizophrenic patients exhibit reduced P300 amplitudes compared to healthy controls. In order to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of spectral P300 generation, we analysed P300 responses in depression and schizophrenia by a frequency based approach. Herefore, the amplification (poststimulus/prestimulus) of spectral power in different frequency bands was evaluated for non-target and target epochs. Generally, we found that P300 responses are accompanied by a pronounced frequency amplification in the delta and theta range. For the depressive patients we detected only under target condition a statistically significant reduction of alpha and gamma amplification compared to controls. In contrast to this, we observed a highly significant reduction of delta amplification in schizophrenic patients, under both target and non-target conditions.