title: Parental 'affectionless control' as an antecedent to adult depression. A risk factor delineated.
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.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology*; D005219:Father-Child Relations; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009769:Object Attachment; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012306:Risk; D012649:Self Concept