Predictive values of early parental loss and psychopathological risk for physical problems in first adolescents

Background: Several studies proposed that early parental loss constitutes a potentially traumatic expe-rience, exposing adolescents to higher risk for the onset of psychopathological symptoms. Much less attention has been given to the predictive role of early loss on the development of physical illness in adolescence. Methods: in a community sample of 418 first adolescents who lost a parent in their first three years of life and their surviving parents, Univariate and Multivariate Cox proportional hazard re-gression analysis with time-dependent variables were used to examine the predictive values of adoles-cents’ and surviving parent’s psychopathological symptoms, and youths’ demographic characteristics (sex and age) for the occurrence of physical illness during a 6-year period of follow-up. Results: irre-spective to sex, surviving parent’s psychopathological risk, and adolescents’ Affective problems and Dissociation were found to predict the occurrence of physical illness. Furthermore, dissociation was the most significant predictors of the occurrence of relevant physical problems Conclusions: These results can be relevant and add to the previous literature in the field of prevention and intervention practices in samples of adolescents who lost a parent in their early childhood, orientating clinical work.