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Suicides on the rise amongst teenagers and young adults – a broken home could be the reason behind suicidal thoughts in the younger generation.

Divorce, as hackneyed as term may sound today, is still a sensitive issue especially when the separating couple has a child from their marriage. Parental separation is an acutely stressful experience for every child, regardless of age, gender or any other factors. Children’s minds are tender and are inadequately prepared to sustain the separation of their parents. Children of divorced parents are undoubtedly the worst sufferers. Children go through acute mental stress, tremendous pain and become highly vulnerable as the family separates. Children may also experience anger at their very helplessness in saving the family from separating.

Adult children from a broken home are more likely to have suicidal tendencies at some point in their lives than their counterparts from the intact families. A recent paper published online in the journal Psychiatry Research studied the association between parental divorce and suicidal thoughts in their children. A study analyzed the gender specific deviations among the study population of 6,647 adults in Canada, of whom 695 had been through parental divorce before they attained the age of 18. The findings suggested that men belonging to divorced families were more than three times likely of having suicidal thinking as compared to their peers whose parents had not divorced. On the other hand adult daughters from a broken home had 83 percent higher chances of suicidal tendencies than their female counterparts from intact homes.

The relationship between the separation of parents and suicidal tendencies in children was particularly prominent in families where the children had sustained stress in the childhood owing to various reasons like parental addiction, physical abuse, or parental unemployment et al. Amongst young women who had not experienced a stressed childhood, the association between parental divorce and suicidal thoughts was almost insignificant. However, even in the absence of any such stressful experiences in their childhood, young men who had sustained parental divorce were twice likely of having suicidal ideation at some point in their lives as compared to men from families who were together.

No consensus in opinion has been reached, however, for why men might be more negatively affected by parental separation. Researchers believe that this tendency in young men could be due to the lack of a close relationship with their father which is very likely post-divorce. Prior studies on the subject also suggest an association between loss of father-figures and adverse developmental outcomes in boys. The study points out factors like childhood poverty or parental depression, both of which are more prevalent in divorced families could also be the reason for such tendencies in the children. The lead author of the paper Esme Fuller-Thomson however cautions that the findings of the study are not meant to panic divorced parents and the data and statistics in no way indicate that children from such backgrounds are destined to become suicidal.

Reference:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-01/uot-pdl011811.php

Author: Ann M
Editor: Dr.Bimal Rajalingam
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Disclaimer: This article is written by a non-medical professional.