Effect of Losing a Parent as a Child

Effects of Losing a Parent as a Child

I chose this topic because over the years I have realized how much losing my father at five years old has affected my life. It has had consequences that go beyond the death of a loved one. I feel that it changed my future, my personality, my beliefs, my fears and the way I perceived the world. It is a scar that has remained with me as I grew year after year, until adulthood and beyond and I still carry with me today. I don’t remember anything in my life prior to my father’s death and the only thing I do remember about him was seeing him lying dead in his coffin. This is a visual I wish I could erase from my memory but I cannot. My father died in 1966 which was a time the people didn’t talk to children about death. I remember feeling very lost and unsure about many things and became very attached to my mother. This attachment was not a good one and over the next five years I was a very shy, fearful and anxious child. In this paper I am going to look at some of the effects that the loss of parent has on a child.

Depression and Functional Impairment

When a parent dies suddenly, most children and teens experience grief that fades over time, but some have increased or prolonged grief reactions that may increase the risk of depression and inability to function normally. A parent’s death can be one of the most stressful life events for a young person and prolonged grief appears to contribute to functional impairment problems in children and adolescents after the death of a parent. It is also important to assess the surviving parent’s grief as this can also contribute to depression in the child ((Melhem, Porta, Shamseddeen, Payne, & Brent, 2011). Because children are presumed to have different emotional capacities than adults, and do not express their grief in the same way that adults do, there has been considerable uncertainty about how children experience grief (Tremblay & Israel, 1998). Unattended...