The Bereaved Child

tragedy but as something shameful and even obscene; these attitudes rub off on children. Fortunately in this country, though not in countries at war, such as Vietnam, the number of orphans has steadily decreased as medical science has progressed and standards of living improved. And bereavement and separation are now recognised as important factors in children's behaviour, although the effect of childhood grieving on later life is less widely accepted. Dr. Felix Brown, the consultant psychiatrist who has done considerable work in this field, told me: 'I have been particularly impressed by the large numbers of depressive patients in adult life that I have seen who were orphaned in childhood.' In a recent study* at the Hampstead branch of the Royal Free Hospital, Dr. Brown compared 331 outpatients suffering from depression with 296 patients attending local doctors for various ailments (average age for all patients was 43), and with statistics in the 1921 census. He found that nearly twice as many had been orphaned before the age of 15 among those with depression compared with the other two groups. In another investigation* into the relationship between orphanhood and delinquency, Dr. Brown (with Dr. Phyllis Epps) found that, compared with the general population, a considerably higher proportion ?f prisoners?even higher among women than men ?had lost either a mother or father before 15 years. This does not mean that every bereaved child becomes