|
 "The public should be aware of children’s vulnerability after
experiencing sibling loss, especially in the first year and for
siblings of same sex or close age,” Dr. Yongfu Yu from Aarhus
University Hospital in Denmark told Reuters Health by email.
“Tailored social support may help to reduce the level of grief and
minimize potential adverse health effects on the bereaved
individuals.”
As many as 8 percent of Americans experience the death of a brother
or sister in childhood. Loss of a sibling in adulthood has been
linked with death of the surviving sibling, but little is known
about the association of sibling death in childhood with the
subsequent risk of death in the bereaved siblings.
Yu’s team studied data from Danish and Swedish national registries
on nearly 56,000 people who, when they were older than 6 months but
younger than 18 years, had lost a sibling. For these individuals,
the risk of dying over the next 37 years was 71 percent higher than
it was for individuals who did not experience the death of a sibling
in childhood.
Children who experienced the death of a sibling had an especially
increased risk of death from the same cause as their deceased
sibling, including a much higher risk of suicide, the research team
reported in JAMA Pediatrics.
The strongest associations between childhood sibling death and
subsequent risk of dying were in the first year after the sibling
had died, and when the bereaved sibling was the same sex as the
sibling who died.
The link was also stronger for males than for females and when the
siblings were less than two years apart in age.
“As this study was carried out in Denmark and Sweden, the increased
mortality risk findings might be less likely caused by the lack of
material or health care needs,” Yu speculated. “More death events
could reflect genetic susceptibility, direct impacts on bereaved
children by psychological stress . . . and indirect impacts through
parents’ and other family members’ reactions such as behavioral
changes.”
[to top of second column] |
“Further research on social environment and family characteristics
might help identify the most vulnerable subgroups of bereaved
children, as well as other family members,” Yu said. “The underlying
pathways that link this life event and the increased mortality risk
needs to be further investigated.”
In an editorial published with the report, Dr. James M. Bolton and
colleagues from University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
point out that for adults, research has shown specialized grief
psychotherapy to be helpful, but there’s not much data on effective
treatments for grieving children and adolescents.
“Efforts to . . . determine effective interventions among youth who
experience the death of a sibling are paramount to prevent the
excess risk of mental disorders and death seen in this vulnerable
group,” they conclude.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2psZz6E JAMA Pediatrics, online April 24,
2017.
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
