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The accidental event of childhood bereavement by death of a parent, and its possible importance in the later development of psychiatric illness, has been under study in recent years. It is a truism to state that, in the present organization of European society, such an event is a catastrophe, but whether bereavement is an event of aetiological importance in mental illness has not yet been decided.
Constance M. Dennehy (1966) studied this question.