When children live through a contentious divorce by their parents, the fallout appears to harm their health for decades, even into adulthood, researchers said Monday.
The study involved 201 healthy adults who agreed to be quarantined, exposed to a virus that causes the common cold, and monitored for five days, Independent reported.
Those whose parents had separated and had not spoken to each other for years were three times as likely to get sick, compared to those whose parents had separated but had stayed in touch as the children grew. “Early life stressful experiences do something to our physiology and inflammatory processes that increase risk for poorer health and chronic illness,” said Michael Murphy, a psychology postdoctoral research associate at Carnegie Mellon University.
“This work is a step forward in our understanding of how family stress during childhood may influence a child’s susceptibility to disease 20-40 years later.”
The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.
Add new comment
Read our comment policy before posting your viewpoints