Study finds children twice as likely to be suicidal after parental ‘deaths of despair’

New research shows that school-age children whose parents take their own lives, drink themselves to death or overdose on opioids are twice as likely to become suicidal as a result.

Five public health researchers analyzed the private insurance records of 164 million patients nationwide filed between 2010 and 2020.

Published Friday in JAMA Network Open, their study found that children ages 8 to 15 were more inclined toward self-harm or suicide attempts after parents ages 30 to 50 succumbed to these “deaths of despair.”

Lead author David A. Brent, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, said these results suggest a biological link between surges in parental despair and youth suicides in recent years.

“The effect appears to be primarily genetic since it is also seen in kids who are adopted but whose biological parents died by suicide,” Dr. Brent said in an email.

He noted that the effect was strongest in girls ages 8-12, who showed the sharpest increases in self-destructive behavior after a midlife parent succumbed to alcohol, drugs or suicide.

Overall, the study counted 561,837 families with children ages 8 to 15 where at least one parent suffered from a “disease of despair” compared with 1.18 million families where parents had no such affliction.

The findings come amid a years-long surge in young adult drug overdoses and youth suicides that accelerated during early pandemic lockdowns.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide was the second-leading cause of death — after accidents — for young people ages 10-14 and 25-34 in 2020.

From April 2020 to 2021, the CDC found more than 100,000 people died from drug overdoses, up significantly from pre-pandemic levels.

Some mental health experts not connected to Friday’s study said its findings confirm what they have long suspected.

“People are hurting, and their hurt radiates to their loved ones,” Stacey Freedenthal, a suicide expert and psychotherapist at the University of Denver, said in an email.

The study pointed to estimates that the adolescent suicide rate climbed by 60% from 2007 to 2020.

It also noted that deaths of despair in midlife have doubled over the past decade, with more than 300,000 children losing parents to drug overdoses alone.

The study’s focus on private insurance data confirms that such problems have spread well beyond low-income Medicaid or uninsured patients, traditionally the most vulnerable groups.

“While initially, deaths of despair were most often found among White males without a college education, this epidemic now affects females as well as males, and has spread across Black, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native, and less socially vulnerable White populations,” the researchers wrote.

Nevertheless, some mental health experts stressed that the findings don’t prove parental distress causes child suicides.

They noted that other factors in youth suicide attempts include social influences, underage substance abuse, poor coping skills and long family histories of addiction.

“I will not refer to this behavior as ’imitation’ or ’modeling’ of their parents’ death by despair,” Dr. Ritu Goel, a California-based psychiatrist, said in an email. “However, these children do have a higher risk for mental health conditions and suicidal behavior, and some have committed suicide due to multiple factors.”

Psychologist Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University addiction researcher, said the study shows it “should be a high priority” to support children in families with broader problems.

“Even before the parent’s suicide, these kids were experiencing elevated stress to which the suicide could only have added,” Mr. Humphreys said in an email.