At Least 43,000 Kids in the U.S. Have Lost a Parent to COVID-19, Study Finds

There’s been a collective quality to the dying the world has witnessed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The nearly 3 million global deaths that have been recorded so far have not been discrete events; rather, each one has radiated outward, leaving holes in families, neighborhoods, entire communities. There is perhaps no hole more gaping than the one left in the life of a child when a parent is taken too young—a loss that leads to traumatic grief, depression and, as research has shown, academic problems and even a higher risk of unintentional death or suicide. Now, a study published April 5 in JAMA Pediatrics has attempted to take a census of the growing number of children in the U.S. age 17 and younger who have lost at least one parent to the pandemic. Not only is the size of that grieving population alarming, the study showed, so too is its make-up, with Black children suffering a disproportionate share of so terrible a loss. “We’re opening up the newspaper everyday and looking at the growing number of people who have died,” says Rachel Kidman, lead author of the paper and an associate professor in public health at Stony Brook University. “But we’re not thinking about the number of people left behind and that’s a staggering amount.” Determining just how staggering took some doing. Without an actual headcount of every U.S. parent claimed by COVID-19, the researchers were left to estimate the number of orphane...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news