Parental divorce as a factor in childhood psychiatric illness

Abstract

Although hundreds of papers have been written concerning the effects of separation from parents and bereavement in childhood, the problem of divorce as a factor in psychiatric disturbance in children has been relatively ignored. This neglect is undeserved: in the 15 years following 1950, the number of children affected yearly by divorce in this country doubled, until by 1965 it stood at somewhat more than 600,000 per year 14. Much of the recent literature on the subject 8,13,15 has focused on the effects of the divorce per se in the production of childhood symptoms. Relatively little attention has been paid to antecedents of the divorce or to the possibility that parental divorce and childhood psychiatric illness may both be related secondarily to a common background factor. Because other authors 3,18 have noted the association of certain psychiatric disorders with divorce, it is important to examine the parents and other relatives of psychiatrically ill children for mental illness and to attempt to correlate such illness with marital status.