Parental death and depression.

Abstract

In this study an attempt was made to examine the association between depression and parental loss by death while avoiding some of the methodological problems that have plagued previous studies of this type. The Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) was administered to a sample of 1,250 patients in general practitioners' offices. Patients were asked to indicate whether they had lost a mother or father by death and their age when this loss occurred. One-way analysis of variance produced a significant father-loss effect (p < .01) on depression, with patients reporting a father loss in the 0 to 6 and 10 to 15 age ranges, having the highest depression scores. No significant effect for mother loss occurred. The father-loss effect remained the same when other demographic factors including city of testing, sex, marital status, occupational status, age, and education were controlled.

Childhood Family Disruptions and Adult Well-Being: The Differential Effects of Divorce and Parental Death

“…Jacobson and Ryder (1969) found that adults who experienced early parental death had more difficulty sustaining intimacy and expressing anger than those who did not have a history of parental loss. The most consistent finding in the bereavement literature is that adults who lost a parent in childhood are more likely to demonstrate some degree of depression than nonbereaved individuals (Barnes & Prosen, 1985;Birtchnell, 1970Birtchnell, , 1978Lloyd, 1980). Although it is evident that different adult outcomes emerge when examining the research on divorce and parental death, this conclusion is qualified by the fact that most studies do not directly compare individuals who have had these different experiences (Amato & Keith, 1991b;Demo & Acock, 1988;Gongla & Thompson, 1987).…”

Early Parental Death and Risk of Hospitalization for Affective Disorder in Adulthood

“…the results of this large population-based investigation on the risk of hospitalization for affective disorders support an effect of early bereavement on adult risk of unipolar affective disorder, as suggested by previous (although methodologically more frail) investigations. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] in contrast, early parental loss was apparently not associated with hospitalization for adult bipolar affective disorder. 7,22,28,29 Our investigation has several strengths, including the fact that it is population-based, with nationwide data from high-quality administrative registers compiled independently of the research hypothesis, and up to 19 years follow-up.…”

Childhood Parental Loss and Adult Psychopathology: Effects of Loss Characteristics and Contextual Factors

“…Discrepancies in this literature may be due to methodological differences, in particular with regard to definitions of parental loss (i.e., death, desertion, prolonged separations, divorce) and the composition of control groups [7]. Age or gender of the individual or the loss parent may influence the risk for psychopathology in the wake of parental loss, but the evidence for this is inconsistent [5,7,9,11,12,16,19,20].…”

“…Several decades of clinical research have documented links of early parental death and prolonged parental separations with depression [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and anxiety disorders [8,[19][20][21]. However, numerous other studies have found no association of childhood parental death or separation with psychopathology in adulthood [22][23][24].…”