Risk of psychiatric crisis soars with death of a child

A study of more than a million Danish parents has found that losing a child younger than 18 raised by 67% the risk of a mental crisis requiring hospitalization.

And it takes five years for the risk to subside, researchers reported in the March 24 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Women were more vulnerable, according to the study. Their chances of psychiatric hospitalization for the first time increased by 78% after a child’s death. Fathers had a 38% increased risk of being hospitalized for psychiatric illness.

Because the study did not assess less severe mental health problems, the researchers said their findings “underestimated [the] incidence rates for overall psychiatric illness” following the death of a child.

The team, led by Jiong Li of the University of Aarhus in Denmark, also found that in the much rarer cases where a parent lost two or more children, the risk of being hospitalized for a psychiatric disorder more than doubled among men, increasing 139%, and more than tripled among women, increasing 235%.

Such risks “were highest during the first year after bereavement, remained significantly increased five years or more after the loss,” and went down if the parents had more than one child.