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To understand the lasting psychological impact of the death of a
parent during adolescence, researchers surveyed young adults who had
lost a parent to cancer six to nine years earlier, when they were 13
to 16 years old.
Overall, 105 of the 593 young adults (18%) said they had little or
no trust in the care provided during the final week of the parent’s
life.
Compared to the participants who were satisfied with the final week
of care, those who were unhappy were more than twice as likely to
suffer from mental health issues like depression, anxiety and eating
disorders, researchers report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,
online August 8.
“We already knew that children who have lost a parent are at risk
for long-term psychological challenges including depression, risk of
suicide, and risk of self-injury,” said Dr. Jennifer Mack, a
researcher at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber/Boston
Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.
“However, a link to trust in the medical providers of the parent was
not previously understood,” Mack, who wasn’t involved in the study,
said by email. “This is important because it offers a potential path
forward to greater resilience and healing after a parent’s death for
young people who experience this type of profound loss.”
The current study focuses not on how teens felt when their parent
was dying, or immediately afterwards, noted lead study author Kim
Beernaert of the End-of-Life Research Group at Vrije University
Brussels and Ghent University.
Instead, it looks at how they feel after several years have passed,
Beernaert said by email.
Young people who had little or no trust in the care parents received
at the end of life were at least twice as likely to report still
feeling bitter toward health providers for failing to make the
correct initial diagnosis, stopping or never starting treatment, or
not doing everything possible for the parent, the study found.
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The mistrustful young adults were also more likely to still want
more information about the parent’s disease, treatment decisions,
and death.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether
or how teens’ experiences during a dying parents’ final days
influence mental health later in life.
Another limitation is the potential for factors not examined in the
study to impact mental health for these young adults, as well as the
potential for teens with psychological problems to be less trustful
of medical providers than adolescents without mental health issues,
the researchers note.
Still, the results highlight the importance of providing
age-appropriate support and grief counseling to children and teens
during a parents’ final weeks or months of life, said Dr. Amos
Bailey, a palliative care researcher at University of Colorado
Medicine in Aurora.
Resources tailored to young people are often lacking outside
pediatric hospitals, Bailey, who wasn’t involved in the study, said
by email.
“What is at stake for bereaved families is the potential for
lifelong mental health problems that are probably more socially
significant for a teenager (who) will live with this grief for 60 or
more years as opposed to a widow who may outlive her husband by 3-5
years,” Bailey said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2wvAhaZ
J Clin Oncol 2017.
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