Court-ordered removal in severe child maltreatment: An association to parental major affective disorder

The authors report on a study of psychiatric diagnoses in parents whose children had been removed from their custody by court order because of child abuse and neglect. Compared to a similar group of parents who had not had children removed, the subject parents had a significantly greater lifetime incidence of affective disorders by Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) prior to their court involvement. Very few of these disorders had been rigorously diagnosed before or treated psychiatrically.