14 DAY TRIAL // The results of a large-scale scientific survey conducted on adults who witnessed the divorce of their parents before they themselves turned 18 revealed that a significant portion of these individuals entertained thoughts of suicide.
The risk was extremely high when compared to the one exhibited by peers who had not witnessed their parents' divorce. This investigation was conducted on nearly 6,650 participants, of which nearly 700 went through a divorce experience before turning 18.
Due to the large number of people involved in the researcher, scientists were also able to tease out gender-specific differences in the way each individual formulates their response to what happened.
In the case of males participants, those who experienced a divorce were 300 percent more likely than peers in families that remained together to consider serious thoughts related to taking their own life.
In women, the percentage was reduced to 83 percent, but it still represents a considerable difference from girls that grew up in normal families, PsychCentral reports. Details of the new investigation appear in the latest online issue of the esteemed scientific journal Psychiatry Research.
The researchers were also able to determine that the proportion of suicidal ideation increased in the case of former children who also saw or experienced parental addiction, physical abuse, and parental unemployment.
Interestingly enough, if no such circumstances and factors existed in the case of girls witnessing a divorce, the correlation between the split and suicide became statistically-irrelevant, the experts add.
“This study suggests that the pathways linking parental divorce to suicidal ideation are different for men and women,” explains the lead author of the investigation, scientist Esme Fuller-Thomson, MD.
“The association between parental divorce and suicidal thoughts in men was unexpectedly strong, even when we adjusted for other childhood and adult stressors, socioeconomic status, depression and anxiety,” she goes on to say.
“Females whose parents had divorced were not particularly vulnerable to suicidal ideation if they were not also exposed to childhood physical abuse and/or parental addictions,” the expert adds.
“It may be that the link between parental divorce and suicidal ideation in men is mediated through factors we cannot control for in our analyses such as childhood poverty or parental depression, both of which are more prevalent in divorced families,” adds paper coauthor Angela Dalton.
Both experts are based at the University of Toronto, in Canada. “These findings are not meant to panic divorced parents. Our data in no way suggest that children of divorce are destined to become suicidal,” Fuller-Thomson concludes.