Death of a Parent during Childhood Increases the Risk of Early Mortality

Losing a parent during childhood can carry a heavy burden. Not only are parents the sole providers of their children, but they also help out with so much of their child's development.

A new study published in the journal PLOS Medicine shows that for some children, losing a mother or father can dramatically increase mortality risk early in life compared to those who did not deal with the lose of a parent.

Study findings involved data from the national registries of all children born in Denmark (1968 to 2008) and Sweden (1973 to 2006) and 89 percent of children born in Finland (1987 to 2006).

Approximately 2.6 percent of the 189,094 involved in the study had lost a parent between six months and 18 years old; a total of 39,683 individuals died throughout the follow-up period of the study, ranging over 40 years.

Children who dealt with the loss of a parent were 50 percent more likely to die throughout this time than those who did not.
Furthermore, findings also showed that children whose parents died from unnatural causes were at a higher risk than those who died from natural ones. The risk of early death was also highest if a parent committed suicide.

However, other genetic factors also came into play, making some children more susceptible to early death with the loss of a parent than others.

"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," researchers concluded, in a news release. "[These] findings warrant the need for health and social support to the bereaved children and such support may need to cover an extended time period."