Children from broken homes more likely to have 'suicidal thoughts'

Children from broken homes are more likely to be plagued by suicidal thoughts in later life than those with a more stable past, research shows.

The study of thousands of adults also found that boys are more profoundly affected by seeing their parents’ marriage crumble than girls.

The Canadian researchers questioned 6,647 men and women, including almost 700 who had been under the age of 18 when their parents divorced.

Depressed: Children from broken homes are more likely to be plagued by suicidal thoughts in later life

This revealed the men from broken homes to be three times as likely to have thought seriously about suicide as those whose parents had stayed together.

The link was strongest in men who had witnessed the effects of unemployment, violence and drug addiction as they grew up.

But even those without such a troubled past were twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts at some point in their lives, if their parents had divorced.

Women whose childhood were marred by divorce were on average almost twice as likely to have considered taking their own lives, the journal Psychiatry Research reports.

It is unclear why boys are left more deeply scarred by seeing their parents’ marriage fall apart but it may be that they feel the loss of their father more deeply.

Lead researcher Esme Fuller-Thomson, of the University of Toronto, said: ‘The association between parental divorce and suicidal thoughts in men was unexpectedly strong, even when we adjusted for other childhood and adult stressors, socioeconomic status, depression and anxiety.

‘This study suggests that the pathways linking parental divorce to suicidal ideation are different for men and women.’

But, urging divorced, or divorcing, parents not to panic, she added: ‘Our data in no way suggest that children of divorce are destined to become suicidal.’

Patricia Morgan, a researcher and author on family life, said: ‘The results do not surprise me, they are in line with everything we know about children from disrupted families.

'Other things, like drug taking, delinquency, joblessness, downward mobility are all higher.’

She added: ‘We are learning more and more about how significant fathers are. It is not enough to have a cardboard cut-out called a father figure.

'The role isn’t filled by the mother’s boyfriend.’

Official figures show that nearly one child in three lives with just one of their biological parents. The bulk of the 3.8million boys and girls live with just their mother, others with their father or with a step-family.

More than two million never stay with their missing parent overnight, the analysis by the Office for National Statistics found.