Strong Connection Found Between Death of Child and Mortality of Mother

[xchrom]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121020162641.htm

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2012) — The death of a child is a tragic event for a family, bringing with it feelings of numbness, anger, guilt and denial. And, unfortunately, for many families, the loss becomes too much to bear.

A new study co-conducted by a researcher at Rochester Institute of Technology uncovers the strong connection between the death of a child and the mortality of the mother, regardless of cause of death, gender of the child, marital status, family size, income or education level of the mother.

Javier Espinosa, assistant professor in RIT's College of Liberal Arts and an expert in health and labor economics, compiled results from nine years of research after studying more than 69,000 mothers, ages 20 to 50. According to Espinosa, the impact to mother mortality is strongest in the two years immediately following the child's death. In fact, Espinosa's research suggests that mother mortality increases 133 percent after the death of a child.

"To my knowledge, this is the first study to empirically analyze this issue with a large, nationally represented U.S. data set," Espinosa says. "The evidence of a heightened mortality rate for the mother, particularly in the first two years of the child's passing, is especially relevant to public health policy and the timing of interventions that aim to improve the adverse health outcomes mothers experience after the death of a child."

[JackN415]

1. Remind me of a mother drown herself one year to the day her 2 children had been drown in a swimming

[JackN415]

2. There was another study (Dutch? Denmark?) about parents die of grief after lost of a child.

[Warpy]

3. The statistics are terrible

as parents who have lost a child are much more likely to divorce, leaving both spouses without the support of the other when they most need it.

Friends and family often withdraw, mostly through not knowing what to say about such an overwhelming loss and partially because it's difficult to be around people in that state of grief.

We need to take mental health much more seriously in this country. The lack of support for parents who have lost a child or children is costing too many lives and too much social disruption.

Unfortunately, what they get is well meaning people telling them to snap out of it.

[JackN415]

4. Sadly, it seems that's the nature way...

when something happens to our children, we are dead inside. Slow disintegration mentally, and the body is just a vegetative existence.

It is now known that severe emotional reaction is actually a physical alteration, often permanent, of the brain. other organs, notably the heart is also affected and broken heart is not a figure of speech.

Anyway, yes. Losing a child is the ultimate abyss of pain and suffering of the human experience.