Divorce and Its Psychiatric Sequelae in Children

Abstract

THERE has been a relative neglect of the study of divorce as a specific mental health issue in children's lives. This neglect is highlighted because of its obvious import for personality development and disturbance of that development on an individual basis, as well as from a sheer public health view of the incidence in our society, ie, over 6 million children of divorce are growing up in our midst today, with the steadily climbing divorce rate pouring forth more and more. Full study of the impact of divorce will require a variety of approaches, using both normal and disturbed children, focusing both on the immediate and later impact, and including particularly needed longitudinal studies. The host of influential variables involved will inevitably require a variety of different types of probes. The purposes of this report are to (1) examine statistically the characteristics of a group of children