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Early parental death and adult depression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Alec Roy
Alec Roy*
Affiliation:
Neurosciences Branch, National Institutes of Mental Health Bethesda, Maryland, USA
*
1Address for correspondence: Dr Alec Roy, National Institutes of Mental Health, Neurosciences Branch, Building 10, Room 4N214, Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20205, USA
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Synopsis

In a matched controlled clinical study of 300 neurotic depressives collected over 6 years, 13% had experienced parental death before 17 years of age compared with 10·7% of the controls; this difference was not significant. There were no significant differences between the two groups when maternal or paternal death was examined separately either before 11 or 17 years of age. Thus the experience of parental death as a child is not in itself a risk factor for neurotic depression as seen in psychiatric patients.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , November 1983 , pp. 861 - 865
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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