Parents’ divorce may significantly raise a child’s stroke risk later in life, study finds

Breaking of a marriage not just causes temporary upheaval in a child’s life, but can translate into long-term health issues as an adult. A new study published in the journal PLOS One, has found that children of divorced parents are at an elevated risk of stroke later in their life. The connection persisted even after accounting for well-known

stroke risk factors

, which sheds light on the impact of early life family disruption leading to deadlier health consequences than previously thought.
Stroke, which can lead to long-term disability, brain damage, or death, occurs when blood flow to the brain is blocked or a blood vessel in the brain bursts. High blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and smoking are some of the common causes of stroke.
The study took into account data from 13,200 adults in the age group of 65 and above with no history of childhood abuse.
It was found that one in nine individuals aged 65 and older who had witnessed parental divorce had been diagnosed with a stroke. On the other hand, only one in 15 of those who didn’t experience parental divorce during their childhood reported it.

“Our study indicates that even after taking into account most of the known risk factors associated with stroke – including smoking, physical inactivity, lower income and education, diabetes, depression, and low social support – those whose parents had divorced still had 61% higher odds of having a stroke,” said Mary Kate Schilke, a university lecturer in the Psychology Department at Tyndale University, the study’s first author.
In a shocking revelation, the study noted that the connection between parental divorce and stroke was found to be as strong as two well-known stroke risk factors: diabetes and depression.

The possible underlying reason

The study authors suspected this could happen due to the chronic stress disrupting the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which controls the body’s stress response. This is strongly connected to an increased stroke risk. Another possible reason could be the high risk of hypertension, and sleep issues that are common among people who experienced divorce in their childhood.

Impact of other childhood adversities on stroke risk

“We found that even when people hadn’t experienced childhood physical and sexual abuse and had at least one adult who made them feel safe in their childhood home, they still were more likely to have a stroke if their parents had divorced,” said co-author Philip Baiden, an associate professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Other childhood issues like emotional abuse, neglect, exposure to household mental illness, substance abuse, and domestic violence didn’t significantly affect stroke risk in adults in this study.

Do Gen X or millennials face similar risk?

The study notes that it is unclear if younger generations would face similar risks, as the youngest participants were born in 1957, prior to the divorce revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, which followed the widespread adoption of “no-fault divorce” laws across most states.
“Due to the changes in societal norms, it is not clear that Gen X or Millennial Americans will experience a similar link between parental divorce and stroke as was evident in our sample from the Baby Boom and Silent Generation cohorts,” the researchers wrote.
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