Long-term Consequences of Bereavement in Children, Adolescents and Young Adults

Early parental death experienced by 4% of the children in Western countries, is considered to be the most stressful and potentially harmful childhood life event and the health consequences may depend on the nature of the bereavement (e.g. relationship with bereaved), as well as by interpersonal (e.g. social support), intrapersonal (e.g. age and genetics), appraisal and coping factors. Studies have shown that children and adolescents have a greater risk of getting a psychiatric diagnose as well as psychological and social problems. Despite of the obvious consequences of losing a parent, there is a lack of systematic studies on the consequences later in life as well as studies that evaluate the counseling possibilities the children and adolescents are offered.

The study will investigate:

• Long-term health effects of experiencing parental death as a child adolescent or young adult. Focus will be on psychiatric outcomes including depression, severe cardiovascular disease, suicide, suicide attempts, psychological well-being and health related behavior.
• Long term effects of experiencing parental death as a child, adolescent or young adult on socioeconomic outcomes as education, employment, marital status/ cohabitation status and number of children/age when having children.
• The long-term psychosocial and behavioral impact of psychological intervention programmes to children, adolescents and young adults who have experienced the death of a parent. Focus will be on: Depressive symptoms, quality of life, posttraumatic stress disorder, life style, relationship functioning, grief and spirituality.

A nationwide register based cohort of people born in Denmark will be established. Long-term health effects and socioeconomic outcomes of experiencing parental death will be based on nationwide clinical and administrative registries. Exposure is defined as experiencing the death of a parent before age 30. The long-term psychosocial and behavioral impact of psychological intervention programmes will be based on a combination of questionnaire data and data from registries.

The part of the study using data from registries will be based on the nationwide cohort. The questionnaire based part of the study will include 3 groups selected from the nationwide cohort:

• Persons who have lost a parent and participated in intervention programmes (identified through counseling centers),
• Persons who have lost a parent, and not participated in intervention programmes (randomly selected matched on age and gender) and
• Persons who have not lost a parent (randomly selected matched on age and gender).

An invitation letter will be send to the 3 groups (5500 persons) by mail, and they will be asked to complete one questionnaire online.

Inclusion criteria

• persons born in Denmark

Exclusion criteria

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