Children whose parents separated on bad terms could pay the consequences for their health years later.
Parents divorce, children drink … even years later! This is not the conclusion of yet another study on the psychological impact of parental separation on the mental well-being of children that says so. No, this is a biomedical research, published in the very serious scientific journal PNAS. If you get sick every winter, maybe your parents owe it to you!
It is Californian researchers who are at the origin of this work with the conclusion just as surprising as its protocol. Scientists have in fact gathered 201 adults, between 18 and 55, in good health, quarantined and exposed to a rhinovirus.
Anti-inflammatory communication!
The result is clear: those whose parents had divorced were three times more likely to fall ill! Precision which is important, it is in fact the children of separated parents, and who “have not spoken to each other for years” who bear the marks in their immunity. Children whose separated parents remained in contact did not show more infection than those whose parents were still together.
The imprint of parental discord is in fact on the propensity to inflammation of their offspring. “Stress experiences early in life have an impact on our physiology and inflammatory processes, which increase the risk of having health problems and developing chronic disease,” says Michael Murphy, co-author of this work, carried out at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (United States).
Researchers suggest that not all divorces are created equal and that communication could somehow cushion the negative effects of separation. It now remains to assess the state of health of children whose parents do not separate but no longer communicate …
.
