Parent‐Child separations during childhood: their relation to adult psychiatric morbidity and to psychiatric referral: preliminary findings

Abstract

A large body of literature suggests that parental loss in childhood bears a causal relation to adult psychiatric morbidity. As previous studies have used identified psychiatric patients, from psychiatric hospitals, it is unclear whether childhood parental loss causes psychiatric impairment (severity of symptomatology) in adult life or is in fact merely associated with psychiatric referral (illness behaviour). The present study of psychiatric outpatients, and “cases” and non‐cases from a community survey, allows these two factors, impairment (severity of symptomatology) and illness behaviour (psychiatric referral) to be clearly distinguished. Parent‐child separations bear no significant relation to psychiatric symptomatology in adult life, but are associated with referral to psychiatric services.