BACKGROUND: The psychological toll on parents of a child receiving a cancer diagnosis is known to be high, but there is a knowledge gap regarding suicidal behavior among these parents. The aim of this study was to investigate the risk of suicide attempt and death by suicide in relation to having a child with cancer.
RESULTS: We performed a binational population-based and sibling-controlled cohort study, including all parents with a child diagnosed with cancer in Denmark (1978 to 2016) or Sweden (1973 to 2014), 10 matched unexposed parents per exposed parent (population comparison), and unaffected full siblings of the exposed parents (sibling comparison). Suicide attempt was identified through the Patient Register and the Psychiatric Central Register in Denmark and the Patient Register in Sweden, whereas death by suicide was identified through the Danish Causes of Death Register and the Swedish Causes of Death Register. In population comparison, we used Cox regression to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of suicide attempt and death by suicide associated with cancer diagnosis of a child, adjusting for sex, age, country of residence, calendar year, marital status, highest attained educational level, household income, history of cancer, history of psychiatric disorder, and family history of psychiatric disorder. The sibling comparison was performed to assess the role of familial confounding in the studied associations. The population comparison consisted of 106,005 exposed parents and 1,060,050 matched unexposed parents, with a median age of 56 at cohort entry and 46.9% male. During the median follow-up of 7.3 and 7.2 years, we observed 613 (incidence rate [IR], 58.8 per 100,000 person-years) and 5,888 (IR, 57.1 per 100,000 person-years) cases of first-onset suicide attempt among the exposed and unexposed parents, respectively. There was an increased risk of parental suicide attempt during the first years after a child\'s cancer diagnosis (HR, 1.15; 95% CI, [1.03, 1.28]; p = 0.01), particularly when the child was 18 or younger at diagnosis (HR, 1.25; 95% CI, [1.08, 1.46]; p = 0.004), when the child was diagnosed with a highly aggressive cancer (HR, 1.60; 95% CI, [1.05, 2.43]; p = 0.03), or when the child died due to cancer (HR, 1.63; 95% CI, [1.29, 2.06]; p < 0.001). The increased risk did not, however, maintain thereafter (HR, 0.86; 95% CI: [0.75, 0.98]; p = 0.03), and there was no altered risk of parental death by suicide any time after the child\'s cancer diagnosis. Sibling comparison corroborated these findings. The main limitation of the study is the potential residual confounding by factors not shared between full siblings.
CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we observed an increased risk of parental suicide attempt during the first years after a child\'s cancer diagnosis, especially when the child was diagnosed during childhood, or with an aggressive or fatal form of cancer. There was, however, no altered risk of parental death by suicide at any time after a child\'s cancer diagnosis. Our findings suggest extended clinical awareness of suicide attempt among parents of children with cancer, especially during the first few years after cancer diagnosis.

Compelling evidence suggests that childhood adversities are associated with an increased risk of hypertension in middle age and old age. The link between childhood adversities and blood pressure in youth is less clear. In this cohort study, we examined the association between death of a parent during childhood and blood pressure in early adulthood in men.
Sweden.
We studied 48 624 men born in 1949-1951 who participated in the compulsory military conscription in 1969/1970 in Sweden. Information on death of a parent during childhood was obtained from population-based registers. Information on covariates was obtained from the questionnaire and the clinical examination completed at conscription and from population-based registers.
Blood pressure was measured at conscription according to standard procedures.
The multivariable least square means of systolic and diastolic blood pressure did not differ between bereaved (128.25 (127.04-129.46) and 73.86 (72.89-74.84) mm Hg) and non-bereaved study participants (128.02 (126.86-129.18) and 73.99 (73.06-74.93) mm Hg). Results were similar when considering the cause of the parent\'s death, the gender of the deceased parent or the child\'s age at loss. Loss of a parent in childhood tended to be associated with an increased hypertension risk (OR and 95% CI: 1.10 (1 to 1.20)); the association was present only in case of natural deaths.
We found no strong support for the hypothesis that stress following the loss of a parent during childhood is associated with blood pressure or hypertension in youth in men.

Many researchers have concluded that early parental loss during childhood is a risk factor for depression in late life of adults; however others didn\'t find any association. The objective of this systematic review is to assess whether this association exists or not by conducting a meta-analysis of published studies.
Nine published case-controlled studies were chosen through literature searches in PUBMED, and LIBRARY GENESIS. Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) have been used to assess the quality of studies included. Thereafter, data were extracted from each study and analysed using ProMeta.
Nine case-controlled studies (representing n = 2784, cases=716 and controls=2068) were included in meta-analysis. The overall random effects model results of parental loss [OR = 2.18, 95% CI, 1.63-2.90, p < 0.00; I2 = 15.79%, df = 8, p = 0.302], parental death [OR = 1.76, 95% CI, 1.13-2.73, p = 0.012; I2 = 0.00%, df = 3, p = 0.600] and parental separation [OR = 3.14, 95% CI, 1.92-5.15, p < 0.001; I2 = 0.00%, df = 2, p = 0.675] showed a strong positive effect on developing depression in adults. Egger\'s linear regression test [t = 0.14, p = 0.895] and Begg and Mazumdar\'s rank correlation test [z = 0.63, p = 0.532] confirmed absence of publication bias of studies included in this meta-analysis.
This systematic review was limited by a small number of case-controlled studies included in meta-analysis due to the differences in methodological designs of studies.
The study concluded that parental loss, parental death, and parental separation before age 18 are risk factors of depression in adulthood.

Urbanicity has been reported to associate with an increased risk of psychotic experiences (PEs) in developed countries but less is known about the situation in developing countries. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of birth/upbringing place and other environmental factors on PEs in Chinese university students.
A computer-assisted cross-sectional survey was conducted on 4620 second-year undergraduates, using a stratified cluster sampling. Birth places and residential mobility before 16 years old were recorded. PEs were measured using the subscales of psychoticism and paranoid ideation in the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R). Six questions extracted from the childhood section of the World Mental Health Composite International Diagnostic Interview (WMH-CIDI) were used to assess childhood trauma.
Generalized ordered logit model of multiple regression analysis revealed that participants with rural birth/upbringing (e.g. rural upbringing, on graded factor score of psychoticism and paranoid ideation [GFSPPI], 0 versus 1 & 2, odds ratio [OR] 1.409, 95% CI 1.219-1.628, p < 0.00001; 0 & 1 versus 2, OR 1.584, 95% CI 1.179-2.128, p < 0.00001) and those who reported childhood trauma (e.g. on GFSPPI, 0 versus 1 & 2, OR 1.737, 95% CI 1.498-2.014, p < 0.00001; 0 & 1 versus 2, OR 1.618, 95% CI 1.224-2.140, p < 0.00001) were apt to present more severe PEs. While upbringing places and childhood trauma affected both the presence and the severity of PEs, gender affected the presence or absence of PEs only (e.g. females, on GFSPPI, 0 versus 1 & 2, OR 1.887, 95% CI 1.631-2.183, p < 0.00001; 0 & 1 versus 2, OR 0.927, 95% CI 0.702-1.223, p = 0.593). Besides, the number of risk factors was associated with the severity of PEs in the cumulative odds logistic regression analysis (e.g. 3 risk factors versus 0 risk factor, on GFSPPI, OR 4.126, 95% CI 3.075-5.537, p < 0.00001).
Female, rural birth/upbringing and childhood trauma are risk factors of PEs in university students in China. The discrepancy in the findings between developed countries and China has important implications for urbanicity as a risk factor for PEs.

BACKGROUND: We investigated the age at exposure to parental suicide and the risk of subsequent suicide completion in young people. The impact of parental and offspring sex was also examined.
METHODS: Using a cohort study design, we linked Taiwan\'s Birth Registry (1978-1997) with Taiwan\'s Death Registry (1985-2009) and identified 40,249 children who had experienced maternal suicide (n = 14,431), paternal suicide (n = 26,887), or the suicide of both parents (n = 281). Each exposed child was matched to 10 children of the same sex and birth year whose parents were still alive. This yielded a total of 398,081 children for our non-exposed cohort. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to compare the suicide risk of the exposed and non-exposed groups.
RESULTS: Compared with the non-exposed group, offspring who were exposed to parental suicide were 3.91 times (95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.10-4.92 more likely to die by suicide after adjusting for baseline characteristics. The risk of suicide seemed to be lower in older male offspring (HR = 3.94, 95% CI = 2.57-6.06), but higher in older female offspring (HR = 5.30, 95% CI = 3.05-9.22). Stratified analyses based on parental sex revealed similar patterns as the combined analysis.
CONCLUSIONS: As only register--based data were used, we were not able to explore the impact of variables not contained in the data set, such as the role of mental illness.
CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest a prominent elevation in the risk of suicide among offspring who lost their parents to suicide. The risk elevation differed according to the sex of the afflicted offspring as well as to their age at exposure.