Suicide-bereaved children and adolescents: II. Parental and family functioning

Objective: The current study extends the authors' earlier examination of su icide-bereaved (SB) children from the Grief Research Study, a longitudinal study of childhood bereavement after parental death, by examining the child ren's family history of psychopathology and family environment before and a fter death. Method: Twenty-six SE children, aged 5 to 17 years, and their 1 5 surviving parents were compared with 332 children bereaved from parental death not caused by suicide (NSB) and their 201 surviving parents in interv iews 1, 6, 13, and 25 months after the death. Results: Suicide completers e videnced more psychopathology than parents who died from reasons other than suicide. Contrary to expectations, surviving SE parents were not more impa ired than NSB parents. Before the death, SE families were less stable than NSB families and relationships with the deceased SE parent were compromised . However, no differences were detected between groups in children's relati onships with their surviving parents. Likewise, few differences were found in social support or changes in religious beliefs. Conclusions: SE children generally come from families with a history of psychopathology and substan tial family disruption. However, surviving SE parents do not exhibit higher rates of psychopathology than other bereaved parents and many have positiv e relationships with their children.