Impact of Sudden Parental Death on Children and Families (IMPACT) Study
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Dates: 8/9/2002-12/31/2012
This study looked at how the sudden death of a parent affected children over time. We followed 245 children who lost a parent to suicide, an accident, or sudden illness, and compared them to 185 children who had not lost a parent. Two years after the death, we found that losing a parent made children four times more likely to have depression, even when we considered earlier risk factors. We checked the children again at three and six years after the loss to see how it affected their mental health, school and work progress, relationships, and physical health. We also studied grief patterns and tested whether family support, coping skills, or genetics changed how children responded to the loss. This research was the first long-term study of its kind and helped identify which children and families were most at risk, so future programs can better support them.
Selected Primary Outcome Papers:
- PubMed - Phenomenology and correlates of complicated grief in children and adolescents
- PMC - Antecedents and Sequelae of Sudden Parental Death in Offspring and Surviving Caregivers
- PMC - The Incidence and Course of Depression in Bereaved Youth 21 Months After the Loss of a Parent to Suicide, Accident, or Sudden Natural Death
- PMC - Health Risk Behaviors in Parentally Bereaved Youth
- PMC - Dissociable patterns of neural activity during response inhibition in depressed adolescents with and without suicidal behavior
- PMC - The Course of Grief in Children Bereaved by Sudden Parental Death
- PMC - Longitudinal Effects of Parental Bereavement on Adolescent Developemental Competence
- PMC - The Phenomenology and Course of Depression in Parentally Bereaved and Non-Bereaved Youth
- PMC - Effect of Parental Bereavement on Health Risk Behaviors in Youth: A 3-Year Follow-up
- PMC - Preserved hippocampal function during learning in the context of risk in adolescent suicide attempt
- PMC - Alcohol and Substance Abuse in Parentally Bereaved Youth
- PMC - A Prospective Study of Parentally Bereaved Youth, Caregiver Depression, and Body Mass Index
- PMC - Cortisol Response to Social Stress in Parentally Bereaved Youth
- PubMed - Differential patterns of activity and functional connectivity in emotion processing neural circuitry to angry and happy faces in adolescents with and without suicide attempt
- PMC - Identifying Porlonged Grief Reactions in Children: Dimensional and Diagnostic Approaches
- PMC - Right superior temporal gyrus volume in adolescents with a history of suicide attempt
- PMC - Altered Neural Funtion to Happy Faces in Adolescents with and At Risk for Depression
- PMC - Commentary: The course of depression after childhood parental death-- a reflection on Berg, et al. (2016)
- PMC - Blood pressure recovery to social stress in parentally bereaved and non-bereaved youths
- PMC - The Burden of Bereavement: Early-Onset Depression and Impairment in Youth Bereaved Parental Sudden Death in a 7-Year Prospective Study
- PMC - Cortisol Responses to Stress as a Predictor for Suicidal Ideation
- PubMed - Prospective evaluation of the DSM-5 persistent complex bereavement disorder criteria in adults: dimensional and diagnostic approaches