News Release

Better psychiatric support needed for children who lose a parent

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

(Psychological disturbance and service provision in parentally bereaved children: prospective case-control study)

Children who have lost a parent are not all receiving the support services that they need, report a team of researchers from south east England in this week's BMJ. Service provision seems to be based on the age of the child and how their parent died rather than on the mental health difficulties they or their surviving parent, might be experiencing say the team.

Led by Dr Linda Dowdney from Sutton Hospital in Surrey, the researchers studied 45 bereaved families with children ranging in age from two to 15 years. They found that both the bereaved children and the surviving parents showed more psychiatric difficulties than the team had expected. Their findings suggest that boys are more affected than girls; that bereaved mothers had more difficulties than bereaved fathers and that psychological distress in bereaved parents is associated with psychological difficulties in their children.

In terms of the support given to the bereaved families, Dowdney et al found that children were more likely to be offered help if their parent's death had been expected or if they had committed suicide. They also found that children under five years of age were less likely to be offered services than older children, even if their surviving parents wanted it.

The authors of the study conclude that there is a role for primary care health professionals in identifying those families in need of psychiatric support and referring them to the appropriate services.

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Contact:

Dr Richard Wilson, Consultant Paediatrician, Kingston Hospital, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey


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