Abstract
Death of an Adult Child: Biopsychosocial Effects on Aging Parents
Christy Erving, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, The University of Texas at Austin
This project will rely on national, longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) to create a demographic profile of parents who have experienced the death of an adult child, and establish associations of adult child death (age 21+) with psychological (depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, excessive drinking) and biological (inflammatory) processes that have the potential to influence parents’ health and dementia risk. Interview data will also be collected with 30 bereaved parents to explore the lived experience of loss, and to guide hypothesis development as well as selection of variables for future quantitative analyses.