Each child copes differently with death of parent

Most children are resilient and will begin to slowly recover from the loss of a parent, with grief beginning to subside by the nine-month mark and continuing to decline over time. In up to 40 percent of cases, however, the child’s grief will linger, putting them at an increased risk of depression, according to a new study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh worked with 182 children between the ages of seven and 18 who had suffered the unexpected death of a parent. The children were interviewed at the 8.5 month mark, and subsequent interviews were held at the one and two year marks.

The researchers found that the children could be divided into three groups based upon their grief reactions. In the first group, 107 children had lower scores in the initial interview, and continued to recover from their grief at the follow-up interviews. The second group, made up of 56 children, had high initial grief scores that began to decline at the one and two year marks. The third group, which included 19 children, showed high grief scores during the first interview and no improvement at the follow-up sessions.

Depression was far more prevalent in the second and third groups, affecting up to half of the children by the final interview, compared to only a quarter of the children in the first group.

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