Mothers of emigrants more likely to suffer depression

Mothers of emigrants who left Irish shores in the midst of the recession are more prone to depression than those whose children live in Ireland.
Women whose children have relocated overseas in the recent years have suffered a rise in depressive symptoms as well as feelings of loneliness, according Trinity College Dublin’s Longitudinal Study on Ageing (Tilda).
Tilda is carrying out a 10-year study on the health and well-being of over 8,000 people above the age of 50. Each participant was interviewed in 2010 and then again in 2012.
The first analysis of the results showed that although many people had seen their assets’ value decrease by an average of 45 per cent from 2007 to 2012, there was little impact on their overall health and mental well-being.
However, when Tilda learnt that similar research in Mexico showed that parents who had seen their children emigrate had suffered a rise in depression and loneliness, they looked back over their own results to see if there was a similar pattern.
What they discovered was that out of 2,911 parents whose children resided in Ireland in 2010, 361 had at least one child who had left the country in 2012. The participants were asked a number of questions linked to depressive symptoms such as the regularity they experience positive and negative thoughts, while they were also asked to say how they viewed their own mental health as well as if they considered themselves as being lonely.
On average, parents of emigrants were younger, had better physical and mental health and were more highly educated that the parents whose children remained in Ireland when the first interviews took place.
However, by 2012, increased symptoms of depression were recorded in mothers who’d had at least one child emigrate, even when factors such as retirement, a decline in physical health and widowhood were accounted for.
The same mental health reaction in fathers was not seen, with the exception of those above the age of 65, who suffered more from loneliness after a child had emigrated.