CHILDHOOD PARENTAL LOSS AND ALCOHOL DEPENDENCE AMONG JAPANESE MEN - ACASE-CONTROL STUDY

There have been many studies in the literature examining childhood par ental loss as a risk factor for adult psychiatric disorders such as de pression, schizophrenia or anxiety disorders. However, with regard to alcohol dependence, only a limited number of such studies exists, and these have reported inconsistent findings. The present paper aims to e xamine the relationship between early parental loss and subsequent dev elopment of alcohol dependence among Japanese men. We directly intervi ewed 75 men with alcohol dependence (according to DSM-III-R), who were visiting 23 psychiatric hospitals and clinics all over Japan, and 52 healthy controls without any lifetime psychiatric diagnosis, drawn fro m a general population. When stratified for sex and age, there was no statistically significant difference between the patients and the cont rols in the rates of maternal or paternal death or separation before t he age of 16 years. These findings and the review of the literature su ggest that the relationship between childhood parental loss and alcoho l dependence is not a straightforward one.