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1 Senior Registrar in Child Psychiatry, King's College Hospital
In any study of bereavement in psychiatric illness, the problem of control groups is crucial. Previous studies have not attempted to control the year of birth or parental age at birth. Evidence is presented of the unreliability of these studies. A method of calculating the expected incidence of loss of parents is presented and this is shown to correspond closely with the value observed in the 1921 Census and from the 1959 claims for Widows' Pensions. Estimates from three general population samples which have not come to any form of medical attention are presented and the results shown to be widely at variance.
1. 1,020 psychiatric patients composed of consecutive admissions under the age of sixty to three hospitals serving areas of London were interviewed, especially with regard to childhood circumstances and bereavement. [See Table XVIII in Source Pdf.]
2. There was an excess of male depressives who lost their mother, of female depressives who lost their father, and for both sexes depressives suffered loss of either parent to excess between the ages of ten and before reaching their fifteenth birthday.
3. There was an excess of both male and female schizophrenics who lost their mother before the age of five, and the male schizophrenics demonstrated an excess of father loss between the age of five and before reaching their tenth birthday.
4. Male alcoholics showed a significant increase of loss of both parents, while female alcoholics showed an excess of those who lost mother only.
5. Male drug addicts showed an excess of father loss and female drug addicts an excess of mother loss.
All these losses occurred to excess at a rate which could only occur by chance less than five times in a hundred.
6. All groups except drug addicts showed a proportion who were born to slightly older mothers and fathers, the mean age of both mother and father being higher than a general population figure. The mean age of both parents of drug addicts was lower than that of the general population.
The increase in the bereavement rate of psychiatric patients did not only refer to patients born to older parents, and is not considered to be solely a result of the increased average age of the parents of psychiatric patients.
Submitted on May 23, 1966
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