Lifelong psychological Effects on a Child after the Death of a Parent

by Victoria Butcher Academic Writer

In life, we meet only a few people, who love us unconditionally, for most of us they are only our parents. Parents are with us since we are kids, they take care of us, help us grow and heal through different sort sorrows in life that we go through, not because they get paid for it, but because they love us unconditionally. They are an ultimate gift that God gives us, and perhaps one of the most stressful and saddest events of a child’s life is when he loses one of the parents.

Losing a parent is considered to be the most painful experience for a child. Parents being the most important part of a child’s life, on a parent’s death some children face a high level of depression. The psychological effects of a parent’s death can have a huge impact on rest of child’s life. In this situation, it is very important to support and help the child grieve for adjustments as it is crucial for overall wellbeing.

Clinical Depression

When a stress and grief that occurs due to loss of a parent turns into clinical depression, the child may start to feel that there is no hope of experiencing happiness ever again or of returning to old normal life. According to the Harvard Medical School, when a child has a feeling of hopelessness, that feeling may accompany with a sense of worthlessness. This feeling of being unhopeful and worthless makes the situation worse, as it deepens the depression and increases the need for a proper treatment and support.

Psychological Distress

Perhaps one of the major effects of parental death is Psychological distress. There several ways to identify psychological distress, which include the feeling of extreme pain and sadness and having increased stress. But the survived parent plays a huge role in the life of a child in his overall wellbeing. According to the study that took place in Columbia University School of Public Health proper communication between the survived parent and the child is significant for the child to heal the pain and sorrow.

Grief in Primary School-age Children

Being extremely sad and painful, after losing a parent is quite normal, children have their own mourning process that they go through just like adults do. But how their feelings are processed, variate depending on how old the child is. Association of School Psychologists state that there are a various range of feelings and emotions that school-age kids might face on the loss of a parent, which includes having emotional shock, detachment and extreme behavior such as being very angry or asking one thing again and again, because they are not fully aware of what has happened.

Grief in Adolescents

How Adolescents feel and what they go through upon a death of a parent is much different from primary school-age children, as adolescents understand the meaning of death and they realize what losing someone permanently means, that is why they behave differently. As per some psychologists, on losing apparent adolescents rely on friends more than they rely on family, they go in a state of withdrawal, they have extreme complication separating themselves from the survived parent. On having extreme depression some even go towards having drugs and alcohol.

Long-term Effects

The Psychological effect of losing a parent may stay with the child for the rest of his life, even though it seems like the child has adjusted himself, but deep down the pain is still there, and there is still a sense of loss. The child may continue to experience low self-esteem and have trouble bonding in relationships. It is significant for the people around the child, to support him through the tough time. For some, it takes a little longer to forget, but we have to believe that time heals everything.

Author Bio

Victoria Butcher is a psychologist and a blogger, who lives in the UK. Her major work is in the field of child psychology. Most of her writings are based on the stressful things children go through at a younger age and how those things affect their whole life. She also provides her consultancy services at essay help | English Essays.