“My child died and I don't know how to go on”
After a child dies, parents often say the mornings are the worst: waking, remembering, and having to face the day again. Eating, sleeping, work and the other children can all feel impossible, and the future the parent pictured is gone along with the child. A Danish register study of about 1.08 million parents (Li and colleagues, New England Journal of Medicine, 2005) found bereaved mothers 1.78 times as likely as other mothers to be admitted to a hospital with a psychiatric disorder for the first time, and fathers 1.38 times, with mothers' risk highest in the first year and still raised five years on. What matters most, before any pattern, is whether there are thoughts of dying, and then how far the grief has closed over the rest of life.
What to check first
Safety comes first. Thoughts of ending life, of joining the child, a plan, or giving things away call for talking to someone today, in person or on a crisis line. It also helps to check the body: sleep, food, medicines and drinking often slip after a child dies, and a doctor can look at what has changed.
What could be going on
When a child dies: bereaved parents: Fits if your child's death has upended everything at once: your days, your health, who you are as a parent.
Warning signs of suicide risk and self-harm: Check whether 'go on' means stay alive. Thoughts of dying, of being with your child, or a plan call for talking to someone today.
Prolonged grief disorder (ICD-11, DSM-5-TR): Could be this if a year or more has passed and the longing still fills most days, with little room for anything else.
Major depression: Fits if low mood, poor sleep, no appetite and hopelessness have spread across your whole life for weeks.
Telling them apart
When a child dies: bereaved parents: The grief may be heavier and longer than any loss the person has known, with yearning, anger, guilt and a sense that the order of things broke. It may reach the marriage, the other children, work and health all at once. Waves come and go, with some hours of ordinary life between them.
Warning signs of suicide risk and self-harm: The wish not to go on may come with thoughts of ending life, a plan, gathering pills, writing letters or saying goodbye. Hopelessness and feeling like a burden point toward real risk. These call for help today, whatever else is going on.
Prolonged grief disorder (ICD-11, DSM-5-TR): A year or more on, the longing may be as strong as at the start, with life still organized around the child's absence. Disbelief, numbness and a sense that part of the self died too tend to go with it. Prolonged grief has been linked with a raised risk of suicidal thoughts, so it calls for the same care.
Major depression: Low mood, loss of pleasure, poor sleep and self-blame may reach across all of life, beyond missing the child. Things unrelated to the death may feel pointless too. Depression after a loss can be treated, and it raises the risk of suicidal thoughts.
Questions to carry
- The last time I thought I couldn't go on, what was happening right then?
- Who is one person I could tell how bad it has been?
Also said as
- my son died and i can't go on
- how do you survive losing a child
- my daughter died and i don't want to live
- lost my only child
- can't function since my baby died
- how do parents keep living after a child dies
If you are thinking about ending your life, or about being with your child, please talk to someone today: a doctor, a crisis line or someone close. Parents whose child has died carry a raised risk themselves, and the thought deserves to be said out loud. In the US, call or text 988. In the UK, Samaritans are on 116 123. If it's happening now, call 911 or 999. Elsewhere, findahelpline.com lists free, confidential helplines by country.