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Childhood Bereavement and Adult Depression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

O. W. Hill
Affiliation:
Academic Unit of Psychiatry, Middlesex Hospital Medical School, London, W.1
J. S. Price
Affiliation:
Medical Research Council Psychiatric Genetics Research Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, Maudsley Hospital, London, S.E.5; The Bethlem Royal and The Maudsley Hospital

Extract

The effect that childhood experience may have upon the individual's adult life has always been a subject of great interest.

Since the publication of Freud's essay on “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), much thought has been devoted to the influence of bereavement in childhood, more especially as an antecedent to depressive illness in the adult. Bereavement is peculiarsluyitable for such an investigation since the death of a parent is one of the few reasonably frequent events which are largely independent of the behavioural pattern of the family.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1967 

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