Many women feel mentally ill on the anniversary of a parent's death. Photo: Ulrike Mai/Pixabay.

“These findings clearly indicate the importance of research investigating the impact of bereavement following the death of a parent experienced during adulthood, a topic that has not been extensively studied,” Alessandra Grotta says. She is a researcher at the Department of Public Health Sciences at Stockholm University and is one of the authors of the article.
The research study, which is based on register data, covers all Swedes aged 18–65 who lost a parent at some point during the years 1990–2016.

According to the study, women run an up to 67 percent higher suicide risk in the period from the anniversary of a parent's death up to a few days after compared to when not experiencing the anniversary.

More widespread knowledge on anniversary reactions may benefit not only benefit bereaved people, but also relatives and friends, who could more promptly detect signs of mental distress.

An increased risk was observed among women who have lost their mother but not among those who lost their father. Moreover, women aged 35–49 do not seem to be at risk in the same way, the researchers did not find any anniversary reactions in this age group. The study further shows that unmarried women tend to be more vulnerable at the anniversary than married women are.

Alessandra Grotta, researcher at the Department of Public Health Sciences at Stockholm University.

According to Grotta, these research results shows that healthcare professionals should be more aware of anniversaries of parental death as potential triggers for mental health problems and suicide risk. She believes they need to take this into account in order to be able to refer patients to targeted support at the right time.
“More widespread knowledge on anniversary reactions may benefit not only benefit bereaved people, but also relatives and friends, who could more promptly detect signs of mental distress” Grotta says.

The study also showed examples of gender differences. In contrast to women, men seem to have a weakened suicide risk around the anniversary.

“These gender differences have been previously observed by our research group when investigating mortality around the anniversary of a child´s death. While an increased risk of death was observed among mothers, fathers showed a decreased risk,” Grotta says.

Mikael Rostila, Professor at the Department of Public Health at Stockholm University. Photo: Niklas Björling/Stockholm University.

Mikael Rostila, Professor at the Department of Public Health Sciences and also one of the authors of the article, thinks it would be very interesting to study the causes these gender differences.

“But then we´d probably need other types of methods, maybe more qualitative methods to try to explain why men does not seem to be affected by anniversaries to the same extent as women.,” Rostila says.

As a further remark, Grotta wants to highlight that despite having used national data, suicide is a rare and multifaceted event.

“Therefore future studies may be needed to replicate our findings. Our future research on bereavement will also continue investigating the circumstances and factors that affect mental health following death of a loved one,” she says.

The article "Suicide Around the Anniversary of a Parent's Death in Sweden" is published in the medical journal Jama Network Open.

The study is part of the research project "A life course perspective on bereavement in childhood and health problems in adulthood".

Håkan Soold