Parental death during childhood and adult depression: A critical review of the literature.

Crook, Thomas H.; Eliot, John

doi:10.1037/0033-2909.87.2.252

Cited by 165 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(34 reference statements)

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“…[10][11][12] The patient groups for our study were consecutively recruited at a number of large medical centers and may be considered representative of the populations under treatment at these centers. They were carefully matched to control subjects from the same population in terms of age, gender, ethnic origin and immigration status and possible effects of exposure to the Nazi Holocaust were excluded.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Underscoring this difficulty, two reviews published in 1980 9,10 reached diametrically opposite conclusions regarding the association of parental death in childhood with adult depression, even though they were based on the same body of literature. While Lloyd 9 concluded that the evidence supported an association, Crook and Eliot 10 took the position that the observed association was spurious and was an artifact of methodological error and failure to account for confounding variables.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[10][11][12] (i) A primary difficulty has been the definition of EPL. Although most earlier studies focused on parental death, others included separation and many did not clearly distinguish the type of loss.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(iii) A third difficulty relates to the control groups to which rates of EPL in psychiatric patients have been compared. As noted by a number of authors, [10][11][12] controls should ideally be matched to the patient group for age, gender, socio-economic status of the family of origin and age of the parents at the birth of the subject (although some of these matching criteria are very difficult to implement in practice). Many other factors could influence the likelihood of parental death or separation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Environment and vulnerability to major psychiatric illness: a case control study of early parental loss in major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia

Agid¹,

et al. 1999

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The current focus on identifying genes which predispose to psychiatric illness sharpens the need to identify environmental factors which interact with genetic predisposition and thus contribute to the multifactorial causation of these disorders. One such factor may be early parental loss (EPL). The putative relationship between early environmental stressors such as parental loss and psychopathology in adult life has intrigued psychiatrists for most of this century. We report a case control study in which rates of EPL, due to parental death or permanent separation before the age of 17 years were evaluated in patients with major depression (MD), bipolar disorder (BPD) and schizophrenia (SCZ), compared to individually matched, healthy control subjects (MD-Control, 79 pairs; BPD-Control, 79 pairs; SCZ-Control, 76 pairs). Loss of parent during childhood significantly increased the likelihood of developing MD during adult life (OR = 3.8, P = 0.001). The effect of loss due to permanent separation (P = 0.008) was more striking than loss due to death, as was loss before the age of 9 years (OR = 11.0, P = 0.003) compared to later childhood and adolescence. The overall rate of EPL was also increased in BPD (OR = 2.6, P = 0.048) but there were no significant findings in any of the subcategories of loss. A significantly increased rate of EPL was observed in schizophrenia patients (OR = 3.8, P = 0.01), particularly before the age of 9 years (OR = 4.3, P = 0.01). Comparison of psychosocial, medical and clinical characteristics of subjects with and without a history of EPL, within the larger patient groups from which the matched samples were drawn (MD, n = 136; BPD, n = 107; SCZ, n = 160), yielded few significant findings. Among the controls (n = 170), however, subjects who had experienced EPL, reported lower incomes, had been divorced more frequently, were more likely to be living alone, were more likely to smoke or have smoked cigarettes and reported more physical illness (P = 0.03-0.001). Long term neurobiological consequences of early environmental stressors such as maternal deprivation have been extensively studied in many animal species. Recently, enduring changes in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function, including corticotrophin releasing factor gene expression, have received particular attention. Analogous processes may be implicated in the effect of EPL on human vulnerability to psychopathology, via alterations in responsiveness to stress. Genetic predisposition may influence the degree of susceptibility of the individual to the effects of early environmental stress and may also determine the psychopathological entity to which the individual is rendered vulnerable as a consequence of the stress.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Environment and vulnerability to major psychiatric illness: a case control study of early parental loss in major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia

Agid¹,

et al. 1999

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show abstract

“…Earlier reviews of the literature on this topic have not been consistent with each other: Crook & Eliot (1980) and Tennant et al (1980) concluded that parental death in childhood has little effect on later development of depression, whereas Lloyd (1980) found that the childhood death of a parent increases the depressive risk by a factor of about 2 or 3. Reviews conducted in the late 80s concluded that, although there is no evidence that parental death is a significant risk factor for depression, separations, particularly those occurring in the context of family discord, seem to contribute to adult depression (Brown et al, 1986;Tennant, 1988).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%