DALLAS >> Divorce can be painful for children of separating parents, but new research out of the University of Texas at Arlington suggests the health impacts may linger far beyond adolescence.

The study, published in the journal PLOS One, found among adults age 65 and older, those who experienced parental divorce in childhood and no other mental or emotional trauma — such as physical or sexual abuse — were more likely to report having a stroke. The odds were one in nine for those adults, compared to one in 15 for those whose parents didn’t divorce.

This link doesn’t mean every child of divorce will experience a stroke later in life, said Philip Baiden, an associate professor of social work at the University of Texas at Arlington, who co-authored the study. As an association study, it doesn’t prove parental divorce causes stroke in older adulthood.

It does hint at a possible link between childhood stress and long-term health risks — something health care providers may want to consider when evaluating and treating those vulnerable to stroke. That information, Baiden said, may allow for more comprehensive conversations on managing stress in a way that helps reduce other risks.

Digging into the data

There are many known risk factors for stroke, a medical emergency where blood flow to the brain is blocked, typically by a blood clot or a broken blood vessel. These risk factors can include medical conditions like high blood pressure or diabetes and lifestyle choices like cigarette smoking or being physically inactive.

Baiden said stroke risk factors can also be shaped by a person’s socioeconomic status. For example, low socioeconomic status has been associated with an increased risk of stroke. Studies have also found that children who were emotionally neglected were at an increased risk for stroke and psychiatric conditions later in life.

“We already know that there is a strong link between experience of physical and sexual abuse — those are the most toxic forms of maltreatment that affect the brain and our immune system,” Baiden said. The question for him and his colleagues was whether, for those who grew up without physical or sexual abuse, there was a link between having a stroke and parental divorce.

To answer that question, Baiden and his colleagues at Tyndale University and the University of Toronto in Canada combed through a 2022 version of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a widely-used national health survey that collects information on health risk behaviors, preventive health practices and health care access.

Out of more than 13,000 older Americans, Baiden and his colleagues found nearly 14% reported their parents had divorced by the time the respondent turned 18 years old.

Accounting for other factors that can influence stroke, such as diabetes, depression and a small social support network, the researchers found that children of divorced parents had 1.61 higher odds of having a stroke compared to those whose parents didn’t divorce. Men also appeared to have 1.47 higher odds of having a stroke compared to women.

“To a large extent, males bear the brunt of divorce with respect to stroke compared to their female counterparts,” Baiden said.

Study with limitations

While there’s no question childhood trauma can leave lasting scars that contribute to poor health outcomes later in life, the study has limitations to bear in mind, said E. Alison Holman, a professor of nursing at the University of California at Irvine, who was not involved in the study. Holman’s research looks into how psychological trauma, especially early in life, impacts subsequent mental and physical health.One of the limitations, Holman said, is that the study is cross-sectional, meaning it collects data from a specific group of people at a single point in time. This is in contrast to a longitudinal study, which collects data from the same group of people over an extended period.

“When you experience prior stress and trauma, you’re more likely to experience future stress and trauma,” Holman said. “There’s a whole length of time between when [your] parents divorced and when [you] had a stroke. The question is: what happened in between? It’s very possible that there’s a lot of stress in between that may have been the real trigger of the stroke.”

Baiden acknowledges the cross-sectional nature of the study is a limitation and he hopes to improve upon it with future research.

“Ideally, we would like to follow individuals who experience divorce over time to see beyond their risk of stroke,” such as evaluating their stress levels at different points during their life, he said.

Baiden also notes the youngest people surveyed in the data he and his colleagues used were born in 1957, more than a decade before no-fault divorce laws were introduced. No-fault divorces could be obtained without having to allege or prove that one person’s behavior is to blame for the dissolution of the marriage, according to CNN.

In the U.S., divorce rates are on the decline while the number of people cohabiting with an unmarried partner is on the rise. Divorce is not as stigmatized as it was decades ago, Baiden said, so there’s a question of whether parental divorce would carry the same stress for children now — and thus risk for stroke later in life — than for generations before.

“We still see that effect even today when we look at the data among young adults [or] teenagers who grew up in [divorced] families, they had a greater risk of adverse outcomes,” Baiden said. “If you know stress comes with those processes and somebody has experienced it, then we want to be able to provide resources that can help that individual manage and cope with stress.”

Miriam Fauzia is a science reporting fellow at The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune News Service.