More than 320,000 children have lost a parent to drug overdose in a decade: gunshots
Esther Nesbitt lost two of her children to drug overdoses, and her grandchildren are among the more than 320,000 who have lost their parents in the overdose epidemic.
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Esther Nesbitt lost two of her children to drug overdoses, and her grandchildren are among the more than 320,000 who have lost their parents in the overdose epidemic.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
More than 320,000 children in the United States lost a parent due to drug overdose between 2011 and 2021 a new study published in JAMA Psychiatry Wednesday.
“It's a call to arms to pay close attention to the consequences of the death of a parent due to a drug overdose,” says the Harvard neuroscientist Charles Nelson IIIwho was not involved in the new study.
We “really don’t talk much” about the impact of the country’s overdose epidemic on children, he says Dr. Nora VolkowDirector of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and author of the new study.
“The (overdose) rates and mortality are so high that it requires all the attention and urgency to address it and keep people from dying,” she adds. “But at the same time, we have essentially neglected to recognize that when someone dies, a family is left behind. And if the family has small children, that makes them very, very vulnerable.”
Several federal agencies, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, conducted the study.
According to previous research, children who experience the death of a parent or primary caregiver are at risk for a range of poor health and academic outcomes.
For example, the death of a parent produces children They are more likely to do poorly in school And even get out. A 2018 study found that children who have experienced the sudden death of a parent are more likely to experience dysfunction and symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The new paper was inspired by current studies estimating children who have lost a parent or primary caregiver to Covid-19says Volkow, drawing attention to the intergenerational effects of the pandemic.
Volkow and her co-authors found that the rate of children who lost a parent to an overdose increased by 134% over the study period – from 27 per 100,000 children in 2011 to 63 per 100,000 in 2021.
More children – over 192,000 – have lost their fathers to drug overdoses, compared to the 129,000 who lost a mother.
More than half of these grieving children had parents who died between ages 26 and 40, followed by ages 41 to 64 and 18 to 25.
Most deceased parents were non-Hispanic whites, followed by Hispanics and blacks. However, the highest rates of parental loss due to drug overdose were among Native American and Alaska Native children.
“Children who come from underrepresented groups with greater economic and social adversity already put them at higher risk for behavioral and mental health disorders,” says Volkow. These risks could be exacerbated by the death of a parent due to an overdose, she adds.
“When I read the (new) newspaper, I had this feeling of déjà vu,” Nelson says an author of a 2021 study It estimated the number of children in the United States who have lost a parent due to COVID-19-related causes.
However, the long-term risks may be even greater for children who have lost a parent due to a drug overdose, Nelson says.
A memorial to victims of the opioid epidemic in Binghamton, NY, in August 2021. A study in JAMA Psychiatry Wednesday shows how many children have lost their parents to overdoses.
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A memorial to victims of the opioid epidemic in Binghamton, NY, in August 2021. A study in JAMA Psychiatry Wednesday shows how many children have lost their parents to overdoses.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
“There are so many factors at play that children can get very, very wrapped up in their thoughts about why their parents overdosed,” Nelson says.
For example, a child may be preoccupied with questions such as “Was it preventable?” Why did my father do that? Why didn’t they stop taking drugs?” he says.
Furthermore, as the study shows, growing up in a household where a parent uses substances is itself a childhood trauma with potentially long-term health consequences for the child. “This goes hand in hand with the whole neglect of certain substances. This is very common,” says Nelson. “With that sometimes comes the abuse.”
As a result, a child whose parents died of a drug overdose may experience complex grief and require more specialized psychological care, he adds.
There are other factors that add even more strain to the lives of these grieving children, Nelson says. “The worst part is the stigma associated with losing a parent to an overdose,” he says. “So that would mean that these children could be stigmatized in school.”
Then there is a risk of future substance use. “As these children reach puberty, they too could start using drugs,” says Nelson. “It gets really complicated.”
Volkow hopes the study will spur measures to better address the needs of these children so that their long-term risks can be minimized. For example, she hopes that efforts will be made to keep children with their siblings and/or other relatives, and that families will receive the support and services they need to address the mental health needs of these children.
“When a child loses a parent, (and) the child welfare system comes in and they remove them and take them away from other siblings, and then they not only lose the parent, they lose the sibling, they lose the school system that they have.” says Volkow.
And there is much more that can be done to prevent parental overdose deaths in the first place, Volkow says, through measures that encourage parents to seek treatment for their substance use.
However, parents, especially mothers (and pregnant women), face enormous stigma and criminal state laws that discourage them from seeking treatment, she says.
“If someone comes to me as a doctor and is actually taking medication and says they are pregnant, I have to report it,” says Volkow.
In some states, such reporting eventually leads to this Child is taken away from mother shortly after the birth. Laws like these discourage women from seeking treatment for substance use, she adds. “Seeking treatment shouldn’t be something people should be afraid of.”
