Children of parents who have committed suicide are at higher risk of early death, a new Danish research shows.
According to the researchers, parental bereavement during childhood deeply impacts the mortality risk of children in years following the parent's death. However, children of the parents who died of suicide had the highest premature death risk.
"Maternal death in infancy or parental death in early childhood may have an impact on mortality but evidence has been limited to short-term or selected causes of death. Little is known about long-term or cause-specific mortality after parental death in childhood," researchers wrote in the study published in PLOS Medicine.
The researchers observed the drift after studying data from national registries from all children born in Denmark between 1968 and 2008, in Sweden from 1973 to 2006, and a random sample of 89.3 percent of children born in Finland between 1987 and 2006.
The team noted that 189,094 or 2.6 percent of children studied for the analysis witnessed loss of their parents between six months and 18 years of age, and 39,683 people died over the follow-up period, which ranged from one to 40 years.
Researchers found that those who lost their parents at a young age had 50 percent increased risk of dying early. The study authors stated that this risk persisted up to early adulthood irrespective of the age of the children during their parents' death.
The study analysis showed that children whose parents died of unnatural causes had higher mortality risk than children of those who died a natural death. According to the researchers, the untimely death risk was highest among those whose parents committed suicide.
Researchers explain that the possible reason behind the connection might be genetic susceptibility and the long-term impacts of parental death on health and social wellbeing of children.
"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 explained.
"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," they said.
