Parental 'Affectionless Control' as an Antecedent to Adult Depression
- 1 September 1983
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Medical Association (AMA) in Archives of General Psychiatry
- Vol. 40 (9) , 956-60
- https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1983.01790080038005
Abstract
The view that depressives perceive themselves as having been exposed to an insufficiency of parental care and to parental overprotection was confirmed in a case-control study of 125 neurotic depressives, using a subjective measure of perceived parental characteristics, the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI). An interaction effect was noted, with the depressives scoring the same-sexed parent more deviantly. A discriminant analysis established that low parental care scale scores were the best discriminators, with raw care scores of less than 10 being highly sensitive in discriminating depressives from controls. Sixty-seven percent of the patients and 37% of the controls scored one or both parents to the "affectionless control" (low care--high protection) PBI quadrant, representing a relative risk of 3.4. It is concluded that the PBI delineates and quantifies a risk factor to certain grades of depressive experience.Keywords
This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit:
- Women whose mothers died in childhood: an outcome studyPsychological Medicine, 1980
- Life Events and Depressive Disorder ReviewedArchives of General Psychiatry, 1980
- Parental Deprivation and Depression in a Non-Clinical GroupAustralian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 1979
- A Parental Bonding InstrumentPsychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 1979
- Parental Characteristics in Relation to Depressive DisordersThe British Journal of Psychiatry, 1979
- Contribution of life events to causation of psychiatric illnessPsychological Medicine, 1978
- Early parent death and psychiatric diagnosisSocial psychiatry. Sozialpsychiatrie. Psychiatrie sociale, 1972
- The Depressive PersonalityArchives of General Psychiatry, 1972
- Childhood Bereavement and Psychiatric IllnessThe British Journal of Psychiatry, 1966
- Parental Deprivation in Depressive PatientsThe British Journal of Psychiatry, 1966