Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. CLX, 1975.: Deprivation in the Childhood of Depressed Women. Shirley Jacobson; Jean Fasman; Alberto DiMascio. Pp. 5-14.

Longstanding hypotheses have placed the basis for depression in the frustration of primary object relationships. The authors attempt to study this issue by surveying types of childhood depression and correlating them with a range of pathology. Significantly, they focus on aspects of the child-rearing process which may be emotionally experienced as loss or deprivation. Thus the qualitative aspects as well as objective events, such as death, parental leave-taking, and parental illness, are brought into consideration. Their findings show limited association of adult depression with overt childhood loss events. However, the evidence supports an association of adult depression with child-rearing processes that involve deprivation. There is also a relationship between the degree of these latter experiences and the severity of the adult illness as measured by hospital status. Further discussion of the factors involved deals with the parental illness or personality disturbance which may have interfered with the parents' child-rearing functions. Although the conceptual bases and over-all findings are hardly novel, the study appears useful in considering a breakdown of variables in the area of childhood deprivation.