The parents of child psychiatric patients.

We hypothesized that parents of child psychiatric patients would themselves show distorted psychological functioning. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the Adult Attachment Interviews (AAI) of 237 Italian parents (128 normative parents with no psychiatric involvement, 30 with a child in psychiatric care, and 79 in psychiatric care themselves). The AAIs were coded for self- and child-protective strategies, psychological trauma and unresolved loss, and signs of depression. The coders of the AAIs were blind to all information about the parents and their children. We found that parents of child psychiatric patients used more extreme strategies than the normative parents; they did not differ in strategy from parents who were psychiatric patients. With regard to trauma and loss, the parents of child patients differed from normative parents, but not adult patients, on trauma and had more unresolved losses than either normative parents or parents who were psychiatric patients. They also had more signs of depression than the other two groups of parents. We discuss the implications of these findings for treatment.