Link between divorcing parents and suicide

Adults whose parents divorced when they were children are more likely to consider suicide than their peers, researchers in Canada have suggested.

Lead author Esme Fuller-Thomson of the University of Toronto and colleagues examined gender specific differences in a sample of 6,647 adults, of whom 695 had experienced parental divorce before age 18.

The study published in the journal Psychiatry Research finds men from divorced families had more than three times the odds of suicidal ideation compared to men whose parents had not divorced. Adult daughters of divorce had 83 percent higher odds of suicidal thoughts than their female peers who had not experienced parental divorce.

The link between divorce and suicidal thoughts was stronger in families that included parental addiction, physical abuse and parental unemployment.

“This study suggests that the pathways linking parental divorce to suicidal ideation are different for men and women. 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,” Fuller-Thomson says in a statement.

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