Photo: Johannes Eisele/AFP (Getty Images)
A new study provides a heartbreaking reminder of the pain caused by the covid-19 pandemic. It estimates that nearly 40,000 children in the U.S. have lost at least one parent to the viral illness as of February this year. The study also found that more than 100,000 children would have lost a parent if the virus had been allowed to run its course unrestricted.
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There have been previous attempts to tally up the grief caused by pandemic-related deaths in the U.S., now at over a half million. A recent poll this March, for instance, found that nearly one in five Americans knew someone personally who had died from covid-19. But this study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, seems to be the first to focus on children specifically.
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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Approximately 40,000 children in the United States may have lost a parent to COVID-19 since February 2020, according to a statistical model created by a team of researchers. The researchers anticipate that without immediate interventions, the trauma from losing a parent could cast a shadow of mental health and economic problems well into the future for this vulnerable population.
In the researchers model, for approximately every 13th COVID-related death, a child loses one parent. Children who lose a parent are at higher risk of a range of problems, including traumatic prolonged grief and depression, lower educational attainment, economic insecurity and accidental death or suicide, said Ashton Verdery, associate professor of sociology, demography and social data analytics and Institute for Computational and Data Sciences co-hire, Penn State.
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