Early parent death and psychiatric diagnosis

Abstract

1. The study was carried out on a large sample of patients referred to the psychiatric services of the North-Eastern Region of Scotland and a control sample obtained by a postal survey of the local general population. The patient sample was divided into five diagnostic groups: depressives, neurotics other than depressive, psychotics other than depressive, alcoholics and personality disorders. - 2. It was shown (i) that there was a significant variation in the decade of birth distribtuion of the five diagnostic groups and (ii) that the incidence of early bereavement varies with decade of birth. The necessity for calculating decade-of-birth-adjusted expected incidences of bereavement for each diagnostic group, on the basis of the general population data, was obvious. - 3. When this was done it became evident that early bereavement was not a significant factor in either the neurotics or the psychotics. In the remaining three diagnostic groups it appeared that early bereavement affected only the female patients. The diagnoses most significantly associated with early bereavement were the depressives and the alcoholics. The period most crucial for parent death was age 0 to 9.