Parental representations of depressed outpatients from a U.S.A. sample

A case—control study of adult depressed outpatients derived from a U.S. sample confirmed previous Australian reports of a significantly greater likelihood for depressives to report an earlier lack of parental care as well as parental overprotection. Only 32% of the patients, as against 62% of the non-psychiatric controls, reported ‘optimal bonding’, as defined by the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), from one or both parents. By contrast 62% of the depressives and 27% of the controls reported exposure to PBI-defined ‘affectionless control’ from one or both parents. As in previous studies, a raw PBI care score of less than 10 was highly discriminating, being reported by 32% of the depressives and only 3% of the controls.