How your parents’ divorce can affect your health decades later

Better book a session with your therapist – another painful consequence of your parents’ divorce has surfaced.

Nearly half of all marriages in the US will end in divorce or separation. Research shows that children of divorce are more likely to experience depression, distrust and low self-esteem, which can lead to problems at school and social isolation.

Now, a shocking new study reports that children of divorce are 60% more likely to experience a stroke at some point in their lives than those who did not go through that ordeal as children.

“The magnitude of the association between parental divorce and stroke was comparable to well-established risk factors for stroke, such as male gender and diabetes,” said senior study author Esme Fuller-Thomson of the University of Toronto.

A stroke occurs when blood flow to the brain is blocked or when a ruptured blood vessel bleeds into the brain. Stroke is one of the leading causes of death in the US, accounting for 162,600 deaths in 2023.

Fuller-Thomson’s team evaluated data from 13,200 adults age 65 and older with no history of childhood abuse. Seven percent of the group reported having had a stroke, and nearly 14% said their parents had divorced before they reached adulthood.

The study authors speculated that the higher risk of stroke may be due to chronic stress disrupting the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which controls the body’s stress response. A dysregulated HPA axis is strongly associated with an increased risk of stroke.

Another theory is that children of divorced parents are at increased risk for high blood pressure, sleep problems that persist into adulthood, and childhood poverty. All increase the likelihood of stroke.

The researchers said they controlled for known stroke risk factors such as diabetes, depression and small social support networks, but missed key data on participants’ blood pressure, cholesterol, contraceptive use, age at parents’ divorce or the types of shocks they experienced. .

That was one of several limitations of the research, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

Another was that the youngest of the participants was born in 1957, before the divorce revolution took place in the 1960s and ’70s following the widespread adoption of “no-fault divorce” laws in most states.

“Due to changes in social norms, it is not clear that Gen X or Millennial Americans will experience a similar association between parental divorce and stroke as was evident in our sample from the Baby Boom and Silent Generation cohorts, ” write the researchers.

The findings support a 2010 study conducted by Fuller-Thomson, which suggested that children of divorce are more than twice as likely to have a stroke in their lifetime compared to other children.

Other health effects

Shocks aside, past studies have found that children of divorced parents often experience negative health outcomes well into adulthood.

Adult depression, a weakened immune system, making them more susceptible to colds as adults, and even premature death are some of these possible consequences.

The age at which the divorce occurred, the intensity of the conflict, and the level of parental support are among the factors that influence the severity of these long-term effects.