Death of a parent during childhood is associated with greater mortality in adulthood

July 24, 2014  13:59

Experiencing the loss of a parent during childhood or adolescence is associated with a greater risk of mortality, according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The study, conducted by Jiong Li and colleagues from Aarhus University in Denmark, finds that individuals who lost either a mother or a father during childhood had a greater risk of mortality in the years following the parent's death compared with people unaffected by parental death during childhood.

The researchers reached these conclusions combining data from national registries from all children born in Denmark, Sweden and Finland (1968 to 2008). Of these children, 189,094 (2.6%) lost a parent when the child was between 6 months and 18 years old. A total of 39,683 individuals died over the follow-up period, which ranged from 1 to 40 years. The researchers found that those exposed to parental death had a 50% greater risk of mortality during the study period than those unexposed to parental death. This increased risk of mortality persisted into early adulthood irrespective of child age at parental death. A greater risk of mortality was found among children whose parent died from unnatural causes compared with natural causes, and was greatest for children who lost a parent due to suicide.

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