Antecedents and Sequelae of Sudden Parental Death in Offspring and Surviving Caregivers

Melhem, Nadine M.; Walker, Monica A.; Moritz, Grace; Brent, David A.

doi:10.1001/archpedi.162.5.403

Cited by 168 publications

(201 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…This finding is congruent with the previously suggested hypothesis that much of the association between growing up in bereaved families and negative long-term outcomes are caused by family characteristics that existed before the death. 1,22,23 These factors are also important predictors of parental death, but there seems, however, to be a small true effect of parental death on school performance, which is independent of the cause of death when these risk factors have been accounted for.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parental Death During Childhood and Subsequent School Performance

et al. 2014

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WHAT'S KNOWN ON THIS SUBJECT: Many children experience the death of a parent during childhood. The long-term consequences of this life event, including school performance, and the importance of the psychosocial circumstances of the home have not been well elucidated in previous studies.WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS: Both maternal and paternal deaths during childhood were associated with lower grades and school failure. Many of the associations (and especially for death due to external causes) were associated with socioeconomic disadvantage and psychosocial problems in the family. abstract OBJECTIVES: Parental death during childhood has been linked to increased mortality and mental health problems in adulthood. School failure may be an important mediator in this trajectory. We investigated the association between parental death before age 15 years and school performance at age 15 to 16 years, taking into account potentially contributing factors such as family socioeconomic position (SEP) and parental substance abuse, mental health problems, and criminality.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parental Death During Childhood and Subsequent School Performance

et al. 2014

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“…Other factors that may contribute further to suicidal risk are pre-morbid parental psychopathology (49), traumatic exposure predisposing to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the development of complicated grief (prolonged negative affect and rumination about the loss), which in turn has been shown to predispose to suicidal ideation in young adults (75). However, empirical data does not support a specific relationship between parent loss due to suicide and suicidal behavior in the child, compared to parent loss due to other causes (76)(77)(78)(79). Moreover, the association between child completed suicide and parental attempted suicide suggests that, while bereavement and loss may play a small role in the overall effect of familial transmission, the majority of the familial effect is due to some other mechanism.…”

Section: Parental Bereavementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…High levels of protective factors lower the risk for suicide attempt in adolescents even in the presence of other high risk behaviors and predisposing factors (67;103) Adult suicide attempters, in general, report lower perceived family support, and concern about the impact on family is one of the most common reasons given by depressed individuals for not engaging in suicidal behavior (104;105). A much lower proportion of adults who commit suicide are in a stable relationship compared to living controls (76), suggesting that the continuation of a strong pair-bond is protective. As noted above, other factors protective against suicide in older individuals are a strong network of support, including living with children (if the individual is female) or having them nearby.…”

Section: Family Protective Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Familial Transmission of Suicidal Behavior

Brent¹,

Melhem²

2008

Psychiatric Clinics of North America

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260

199

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Suicide and suicidal behavior is highly familial, and appears to be familially transmitted independently from the familial transmission of psychiatric disorder per se (1). Adoption, twin, and family studies support the view that the etiology of the familial transmission of suicidal behavior is at least in part genetic, and may be mediated by the transmission of intermediate phenotypes, such as impulsive aggression. In addition, there may be environmental causes for familial transmission, including imitation, and the intergenerational transmission of family adversity. In this review, we cover the evidence supporting the familial transmission of suicidal behavior, possible genetic and environmental explanations for this phenomenom, describe putative intermediate phenotypes, and discuss the contributory roles of early child-rearing and concurrent familial environmental stressors to suicidal risk. A better understanding of the mechanisms for the familial transmission of suicidal behavior can help to shed light on etiology, identify individuals at high risk for the development of incident suicidal behavior, and frame targets for intervention and prevention.Adoption studies (see Table 1) Three adoption studies have been conducted, all using the same Danish adoption registry. Kety et al., in a study designed to examine the genetics of schizophrenia and mood disorders, found a non-significant trend towards higher concordance for suicide in biological, compared to adoptive relatives of adoptees who committed suicide (2). Subsequently, a second study compared the rates of suicide among the biological and adoptive relatives of adoptees who committed suicide vs. biological and adoptive relatives of a matched living adoptee control group in Denmark (3). This study found a six-fold higher rate of suicide in the biological relatives of the suicide vs. those of the control adoptees, and an absence of suicide among the adopted relatives of the suicide vs. control adoptees supporting a genetic rather than environmental etiology (see Table 1). The rate of suicide was higher in the biologic relatives of suicide adoptees regardless of whether the adoptees were psychiatric patients or not. However, it was not possible to determine if the genetic liability to suicide was attributable to the transmission of major psychiatric disorders or to a suicide diathesis per se.In a third adoption study using this registry, a comparison of biological and adoptive relatives of adult adoptees with mood disorder and matched unaffected adoptees were examined (4), revealed a 15-fold increase in suicide among the biological relatives of the mood-disordered adoptees vs. those of the unaffected adoptees (4). This finding supports the role of mood disorder in the genetics of suicide. However, the greatest increased risk for suicidal behavior was found in the relatives of those probands with "affect reaction," a diagnosis akin to Corresponding Author: Dr. David Brent, BrentDA@upmc.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript th...

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“…2,3 Bereaved youth experience higher rates of mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder than normal population controls. [4][5][6][7] Although adolescents experience the greatest distress prior to the parent's death, [8][9][10][11] depression may occur for up to two years later. 4,7 The high levels of distress experienced by adolescents during a parent's illness and adverse consequences following a parent's death make it important to identify family processes that contribute to the adolescents' adjustment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Telling Adolescents a Parent Is Dying

Sheehan

Draucker

Christ

et al. 2014

Journal of Palliative Medicine

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Background: When a parent is terminally ill, one of the major challenges facing families is informing children of the parent's condition and prognosis. This study describes four ways in which parents disclose information about a parent's life-threatening illness to their adolescent children. Methods: We audio-recorded and transcribed 61 individual interviews with hospice patients who were recruited from a large hospice in northeastern Ohio, their spouses/partners, and their adolescent children. The interviews were coded and analyzed using a constant comparison approach. Results and Conclusions: Families inform adolescents about the progression of a parent's terminal illness in characteristic ways that remain fairly consistent throughout the illness, and are aimed at easing the adolescents' burden and distress. The families engaged in the process of disclosure in one of four ways: measured telling, skirted telling, matter-of-fact telling, and inconsistent telling. These results will inform the development of interventions that assist families with disclosure and are tailored to each family's communication style.

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Antecedents and Sequelae of Sudden Parental Death in Offspring and Surviving Caregivers

Cited by 168 publications

References 64 publications

Parental Death During Childhood and Subsequent School Performance

Parental Death During Childhood and Subsequent School Performance

Familial Transmission of Suicidal Behavior

Telling Adolescents a Parent Is Dying

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