The death of a parent is one of the most traumatic events a child can experience and it can have many grave short-term psychological consequences. A new study has suggested that the extent of these consequences could well be an increased risk of mortality going into early adulthood.
The new analysis was published in the journal PLOS Medicine and conducted by a team of researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark. The team found that individuals who experienced the loss of a mother or father during their childhood years had a higher risk of mortality in the years after the death than people who had not lost a parent during their childhood.
The researchers explain that previous studies show an association between loss of a life-partner or of a child and an increased risk of death (mortality), and there is also evidence that the death of a parent during childhood leads to an increased mortality risk in the short term. However, they added, little is known about the long-term impact on mortality of early parental loss or whether the impact varies with the type of death—a natural death from illness or an unnatural death from external causes such as an accident—or with the specific cause of death.
“A better understanding of the impact of early bereavement on mortality is needed to ensure that bereaved children receive appropriate health and social support after a parent’s death,” the researchers write.
The American Cancer Society (ACS) states that when confronted with death, children grieve as adults do and commonly experience feelings such as anger, anxiety, guilt, insecurity and sadness. Just as with adults, grief in children can also lead to behavioral changes. Previous research has found that children who lose a parent become vulnerable to depression and alcohol or substance abuse.
While past studies have been quite small, the new study conducted by the Danish research team was far more extensive, examining subjects from three north European nations.
Increased mortality risk ‘long-lasting’
To reach their conclusions, researchers analyzed data from the national registries of three Scandinavian countries. This information detailed the births of all children born in Denmark between 1968-2008, all children born in Sweden between 1973-2006, and 89% of children born in Finland from 1987-2006.
The new study, which analyzed a huge database of national records, found that the effects of childhood bereavement can be severe and long-lasting.
Of the children born during this period, 2.6% (189,094) lost a parent when they were between the ages of 6 months and 18 years. The follow-up period for the study ranged from 1-40 years, and during this time it was recorded that 39,683 individuals had died.
The authors of the study found that, during the follow-up period, individuals who had experienced the death of a parent had a 50% greater risk of mortality compared with those who had not. This elevated risk continued into early adulthood, unaffected by the age of the child when the parental death occurred.
The increased risk of mortality was found to be greater in individuals whose parent had died from unnatural causes (84% increase) as opposed to natural causes (33% increase), with suicide being the cause of death that resulted in the greatest increase in risk.
The researchers also found that this increased risk was universal across their study group. ”Parental death in childhood was associated with a long-lasting increased mortality risk from both external causes and diseases, regardless of child’s age at bereavement, sex of the child, sex of the deceased parent, cause of parental death, as well as population characteristics like socioeconomic background,” they conclude.
All of the three countries supplying data for the study are high-income countries — thus, the findings are not likely due to health care needs or material lack. It is more likely that the results are connected to the impact of death on health and social well-being, or even genetic reasons.
Despite the vast size of the sample data used for the study, it is unrepresentative of low-income countries and other geographical areas of the world. Future research could examine whether these results correlate elsewhere on the globe.
The authors say their findings highlight not only the need for health and social support for bereaved children, but also that this need may have to cover an extended time period. It is widely accepted that coping with death is difficult in itself, but this research gives further insight into just how difficult it is.
Previous studies confirm the toll bereavement takes on our health. In a 2007 study, researchers found that the weeks and months after the death of a loved one are associated with an increased risk of dying. Moreover, the study also showed that the bereavement period is associated with an increase in non-fatal illnesses as well as emotional distress, suicide attempts, and alcohol-related injuries and deaths.