If a parent commits suicide when a child is under 18 years old, the child has a three-fold risk for taking his or her own life too, according to a new study from Sweden. There was no increased risk if a parent committed suicide when the child was a young adult, age 18 to 25 years old.
"The disruption associated with parental suicide, we think, is greater when someone loses a parent during childhood and adolescence," said author Holly Wilcox of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
- Researchers reviewed the records of more than 500,000 Swedish children, teens and young adults whose parents had died because of suicide, accidents or illness.
- They then compared these children to four million children the same ages with living parents.
- Not only did they find an increased risk for suicide among children whose parents had committed suicide, the researchers also found that a child's risk of becoming a violent criminal increased after the death of a parent.
A previous study found that suicide attempts run in families, and sometimes it is the children who attempt suicide before their parents do. There may be a hereditary factor for depression , that accounts for the results of these studies.
The newest study appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Labels: parental_involvement, suicide, pain-killers
Posted By: Jane St. Clair