Psychosomatic Medicine 22:166-181 (1960)
© 1960 American Psychosomatic Society

Critical Ages for Maternal Bereavement in Psychoneuroses

¹ Department of Neurology and Psychiatry of the Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.
² Department of Psychiatry of the Massachusetts General Hospital Boston, Mass.

Maternal bereavement occurred more frequently in a series of 947 psychoneurotic patients than in the total population. The difference is statistically significant. Deaths of fathers followed a strikingly dissimilar pattern.

The impact of maternal death was most pronounced in early childhood and in female patients. In the latter the critical age was under 9 years. Little girls were particularly vulnerable to the death of their mothers before the age of 3. In males, the relationship between maternal death and subsequent neurosis was, in the present series, at most suggestive.

Data on causes of separation other than death, though less precise, are consistent with the findings on bereavement.

Previous studies indicate that maternal death is important for both males and females in delinquency and psychosis. Future reports should specify which parent died and the age of the child when bereaved. The term "broken home," unless qualified to indicate whether by death, divorce, imprisonment, etc., is obsolete in psychiatric statistical studies and should be abandoned.

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