|
Quelle:
Fachzeitschrift The Lancet
Eine in der renommierten Zeitschrift The Lancet veröffentlichte
wissenschaftliche Studie fand heraus, dass Kinder, die von einem
einzelnen Elternteil aufgezogen wurden, hohen zusätzlichen Gesundheitsrisiken
ausgesetzt sind.
Insbesondere erkranken sie doppelt so häufiger an seelischen Leiden,
bzw. begehen auch öfter Selbstmord. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit
einer Suchterkrankung verdreifacht sich bei Mädchen und vervierfacht
sich bei Jungen.
CHILDREN GROWING UP WITH SINGLE PARENTS AT INCREASED RISK
OF SUICIDE, PSYCHIATRIC DISEASE, AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE (pp 271,
289)
Authors of a Swedish population
study in this week's issue of THE LANCET
provide strong evidence that children brought up in single-parent
households are more likely to suffer health
problems-especially relating to mental illness and suicide risk-than
children brought up with both parents in the same household.
Research on the psychological and health effects of parental separation
provides conflicting results; early studies suggest that divorce
or separation has only short-term effects on the well-being of
children, while more recent reports suggest that the negative
effects of parental break-up may be long-term. Gunilla Ringbäck
Weitoft from Sweden's National Board for Health and Welfare, Stockholm,
and colleagues proposed that low socioeconomic status would be
one of the main causes behind poorer health
outcomes for children growing up in single-parent households.
The investigators compared death statistics and the risk of hospital
admission during the 1990s for around 65,000 children living
with single parents with around 920,000 children
brought up in two-parent households.
Children with single parents showed increased
risks of psychiatric disease, suicide or suicide attempt, injury,
and addiction.
After
adjustment for confounding factors such as socioeconomic status
and parents' addiction or mental disease, children in single-parent
households were twice as likely to have psychiatric disease compared
with those in two-parent households;
relative risks of suicide attempt and for alcohol-related disease
were also doubled. The risk of childhood narcotic abuse was increased
threefold among girls and fourfold among boys living in single-parent
households.
Gunilla Ringbäck Weitoft comments: "Growing up in a single-parent
family is associated with increased risks of a variety of severe
health outcomes. Among the variables available in our study, lack
of household resources plays a major part in increased risks.
Even when a wide range of demographic ,and socioeconomic circumstances
are included in multivariate models, ,children of lone parents
still have increased risks of mortality, severe morbidity, and
injury. However, interpretations need to be done with care, since
these severe and negative outcomes are relatively rare. To describe
,the distribution of health disorder and social adjustment further
studies with less severe outcomes are needed."
An accompanying Commentary (p 271) by Margaret Whitehead and Paula
Holland
from the University of Liverpool, UK, emphasises how it is difficult
to generalise these findings because of differing prevailing sociological
environments in different countries. They conclude: "What
such studies highlight more generally is the need for a
deeper understanding of the policy context in the various societies
under study, and the need to question the meaning of what is being
measured.
Part
of the issue may be ,that the necessarily crude indicators used
to measure complex sociological ,processes may have different
meanings in different places. Whilst in the UK ,and USA, receipt
of welfare benefits is often taken as a marker of poverty, what
is this variable capturing in Sweden in Ringbäck Weitoft and colleagues'
study?...Future studies need to take these lines ofinvestigation
forward, to increase understanding of the subtleties of the multiple
pathways to health disadvantage in specific societies. Such work
is imperative to find effective policies, matched to prevailing
circumstances, to address these inequalities."
Contact: Dr Gunilla Ringbäck Weitoft, Centre for Epidemiology,
The National
Board of Health and Welfare, S-106 30 Stockholm, Sweden; T) +46
8 5555 3669;
F) +46 8 5555 3327; E) gunilla.ringback@sos.se
Dr Margaret Whitehead, Department of Public Health, University
of Liverpool,
Liverpool L69 3GB,UK; E) mmw@liverpool.ac.uk
|
