Parental loss in childhood: relationship to adult psychiatric impairment and contact with psychiatric services.

Both parental death in childhood and parent-child separations (from causes other than death) were assessed in a community survey of psychiatric disorder and in an equivalent sample of psychiatric outpatients from the same community. Symptomatic disorder (psychiatric caseness) and psychiatric illness behavior (patient status) were examined. Symptomatic disorder was defined by comparing community (unreferred) cases with noncases. Illness behavior was specified by comparing the psychiatric outpatients with the community cases. Parental death in childhood bore no relation to either symptomatic disorder in the community sample (psychiatric caseness) or to psychiatric illness behavior (patient status) in adult life. Parent-child separations similarly had no relation to adult symptomatic disorder but were significantly associated with psychiatric illness behavior.