Loss of parent in childhood and adult psychiatric disorder: A tentative overall model

Abstract

Two previous reports on a female population sample in Outer London, UK, had identified certain environmental experiences–such as lack of adequate replacement care after parental loss in childhood, premarital pregnancy, and low social class and poor emotional support in adulthood–as key factors intervening between childhood loss of parent and depression in adulthood. A third paper introduced a measure of the cognitive set of situational helplessness-mastery which was associated, on the one hand, with current depression and, on the other, with loss of mother in childhood. This article examines the relationship between these other factors and situational helplessness both in childhood and in adulthood. Most are highly associated with the cognitive set, but the relationship between childhood helplessness and loss of mother appears to be differentially mediated according to whether the loss was by death or separation. A series of multivariate statistical analyses aims to integrate all the findings so far reported on in this sample into a biographical model of the developmental pathways from childhood loss of mother to current depression.