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October 23, 2010
Maternal Suicide May Raise Child's Odds For Later Suicide Attempt
The Los Angeles Times (10/21, Healy) "Booster Shots" blog reported that when a mother commits suicide, "there's an even greater likelihood a child will go on to make a similar attempt than when" a father commits suicide, according to a study published online Oct. 18 in the journal Pediatrics.
This study "follows another study of parental suicide's effect on children published last spring" that "found that children or teens that lost a parent to suicide were three times likelier to later commit suicide themselves than were their peers with living parents."
HealthDay (10/21, Dotinga) explained that researchers "examined Swedish databases to discover what happened to 5,600 children whose mothers committed suicide and 17,847 whose fathers committed suicide during the years 1973-2003," then "compared that data to rates of children whose parents died in accidents."
After adjusting for confounding factors, the study authors "found that the children of mothers who committed suicide were nearly twice as likely to be hospitalized in connection to a suicide attempt than those whose mothers died in accidents."
Related Links:
- "A mother's suicide, more than a father's, predicts her offspring's likelihood of attempting suicide," Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times, October 21, 2010.
- "Mom's Suicide May Raise Child's Odds for Later Suicide Attempt," Randy Dotinga, Healthday, October 21, 2010.
Posted by admin at October 23, 2010 12:08 AM