Stress or Trauma During Childhood Can Lead to Numerous Health Issues
Evidence suggests that adverse childhood experiences (or ACEs) — stressful or traumatic events that children may face, such as physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, neglect, or family dysfunction — can impact both mental and physical health later in life.
The Divorce-Stroke Connection
To examine the link between divorce and stroke risk, researchers used data from more than 13,000 adults who were part of the 2022 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). The BRFSS, a collaborative project between state health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, collects health-related data via telephone surveys.
The participants were 65 or older, and 57 percent female, 79 percent white, 9 percent Black, and 12 percent Hispanic or other races.
The researchers excluded participants who had been exposed to sexual or physical abuse, says senior author Esme Fuller-Thomson, PhD, a professor of social work and director for the Institute of Life Course and Aging at the University of Toronto.
“Our research wanted to clarify the association between parental divorce and stroke by avoiding any potential confounding with childhood abuse,” says Dr. Fuller-Thomson.
Of the participants, 7.3 percent had experienced stroke and 13.9 percent had parents who’d divorced before they turned 18 years old.
Researchers “were saddened, but not surprised,” that parental divorce was associated with greater odds of stroke, says Fuller-Thomson.
“But we were surprised that the association between parental divorce and stroke was of similar magnitude to two well-established risk factors for stroke: diabetes and male gender,” she says.
Staying in Childhood Home With Trusted Adult Didn’t Reduce Additional Stroke Risk
“We found that even when people hadn’t experienced childhood physical and sexual abuse, and had at least one adult who made them feel safe in their childhood home, they still were more likely to have a stroke if their parents had divorced,” said coauthor Philip Baiden, PhD, associate professor in the school of social work at the University of Texas in Arlington, in the press release.
Other forms of childhood adversity — emotional abuse, neglect, household mental illness, substance abuse, and exposure to parental domestic violence — were not significantly associated with stroke in this study.
Why Might Parents’ Divorce Increase Stroke Risk?
The study wasn’t designed to uncover why children of divorce could have a higher stroke risk, but the researchers speculate there could be both biological and social factors at play.
“From a biological embedding perspective, having your parents split up during childhood could lead to sustained high levels of stress hormones. Experiencing this as a child could have lasting influences on the developing brain and a child’s ability to respond to stress,” said Fuller-Thomson in the statement.
Socially, divorce was much less common for older generations, and much more stigmatizing. For these reasons the level of parental conflict that would have led to divorce may be higher, thereby making the experience more traumatic, the study authors wrote.
Fuller-Thomson acknowledges that this study only shows an association, not direct causation — it doesn’t prove that divorce causes an increase in stroke risk, only that the two things are related.
There are other additional limitations to the findings. Some people may have died from stroke before age 65, and therefore wouldn’t be included in the study group. The survey also couldn’t capture when the divorce occurred, or the level of contact with the noncustodial parent, the authors wrote.
Would Divorce Have the Same Impact on Gen-Xers and Millennials?
Trauma and associated stroke risk may or may not be present in younger people, including Gen-Xers and Millennials, according to the authors. “Future research is needed to investigate generational differences in the parental divorce-stroke association,” they wrote.
How to Reduce Your Stroke Risk
“We are hoping that adults with divorced parents will be particularly vigilant about their health,” says Fuller-Thomson.
She recommends the following steps to reduce your risk of stroke:
- Get regular check-ups.
- Maintain low blood pressure and low cholesterol.
- Don’t smoke.
- Keep physically active.
- Maintain a healthy weight.
- Eat more fruits and vegetables.
- Decrease salt intake.
- Don’t drink excessively.