Bereavement in Childhood and Adult Psychiatric Disturbance

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Abstract
The incidence of childhood bereavement was determined for a serial sample of 1000 patients in a VA mental hygiene outpatient clinic and compared with normative incidence estimates obtained by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and with results of other investgations of childhood bereavement. The group studied, in agreement with other reports, showed an appreciably greater frequency of bereavement in childhood generally than did the general population. In direct contrast to the control data, the incidence both of loss of father and loss of mother decreased regularly, the older the child when bereaved. There remains a possibility that with enough cases and a finer age classification, it may be demonstrated that psychiatric vulnerability is greatest at specific developmental stages. The relative frequencies of maternal and paternal bereavement showed no significant divergence from those in the general population. With the aim of disclosing personality configurations associated with early bereavement, profiles on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory available for a sub-sample were classified into subgroups according to age and type of loss and compared with a sample of the general clinic population. No significant group differences were obtained. A more thoroughgoing assessment of personality may reveal characteristic consequences of parental bereavement in early childhood. However, the authors incline toward the belief that loss of a parent in early life constitutes a nonspecific trauma whose effects depend upon complex interactions among such variables as sex, biogenetic vulnerability, parent surrogates, type of loss, availability of compensatory supports, and developmental status.

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