Losing a child is one of the hardest things a parent can go through. While it makes sense that such pain could trigger a psychiatric illness in a parent, there aren't many studies on the topic. Several small studies have suggested that parents are likely to suffer anxiety and depression after a child's death. Researchers in Denmark used huge national databases to look at whether having a child die increases a parent's chance of being hospitalized for mental illness.

What the researchers wanted to know: Does losing a child increase the risk of psychiatric illness?

What they did: The researchers took advantage of Denmark's registers of people and psychiatric hospitalizations. They looked at the more than 1 million people born since 1952 who had at least one child under the age of 18 by Jan. 1, 1999. The researchers looked for any parents who lost children or were hospitalized for psychiatric reasons. (Along with all that data, the Danish government has the Data Protection Agency to make sure that the privacy of individuals is respected; that agency approved this study.)

What they found: Losing a child increased the risk of psychiatric hospitalization by 67 percent. Mothers of children who died were more likely than fathers to be hospitalized. The risk of psychiatric hospitalization was higher for bereaved parents in all of the categories the researchers looked at in detail—affective disorders (including depression), schizophrenia, and substance abuse. Neither the child's nor the parent's age when the child died made a difference to the risk of hospitalization.

What the study means to you: Indeed, losing a child is an unbelievably stressful event. And it doesn't just lead to disorders like depression that affect the mood; the risks of schizophrenia and substance abuse also increased after the death of a child.

Caveats: There were relatively few fathers who were hospitalized after the death of a child, which makes the comparisons involving fathers a little iffy. The researchers didn't know anything about family history of psychiatric illness. Also, it's impossible to rule out the chance that genetics led to both the child's death and the parents' illness; for example, a genetic link between schizophrenia and sudden infant death syndrome has been hypothesized. (The researchers found no evidence for that particular link in this case.)

Find out more: For parents who have lost children, check out www.bereavedparentsusa.org.

The National Mental Health Association offers some information about coping with loss.

Read the article: Li, J. et al. "Hospitalization for Mental Illness Among Parents After the Death of a Child." New England Journal of Medicine. March 24, 2005, Vol. 351, No. 12, pp. 1990–1996.

Abstract online: http://content.nejm.org