Fatherless children have more problems

FATHERLESS children have more health problems including mental health issues, says Dr Elizabeth Primus.

“The absence of a father in a child’s life is devastating. Fatherless children have significantly more health problems including acute and chronic pain, asthma, headaches, stomach aches, mental health problems, particularly anxiety, depression and suicide.”

She was speaking yesterday at the “Empower Me” Open House in Celebration of Women held at the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs, Port of Spain.

Primus said she is a single mother of a 31-year-old son, has practised medicine in Trinidad for 20 years in the fields of internal medicine, cardiology, anaesthesiology and family medicine. She has also volunteered with Youth With A Mission “and I am also a passion lover of Jesus Christ.”

She said victims of physical or sexual abuse may have fear of men or women depending on who abused you. She also said sexual abuse can open the door to an “unclean and unloving spirit” which can be transferred from the abuser to the victim and is a source of a shameful feeling.

“There may be an open door to bitterness to the person who abused you and yourself.” She said divorce of parents can be an open door for rejection and the loss of a parent as a child can lead to fear, abandonment, insecurity and possibly anger at God for the person who died. She said rejection by peers, teachers, and negative words spoken can be very damaging to the human spirit. “And Proverbs 18 says that death and life are in the power of the tongue. So what negative words were spoken over you? Have you embraced these words and allowed them to tarnish your self-esteem?”

The magazine Psychology Today has reported that fatherless children report significantly more psychosomatic health symptoms and illness such as acute and chronic pain, asthma, headaches and stomach aches.

A Reuters article of July 2017 reported on a US study which found the loss of a father due to death, divorce or jail is associated with children having shorter caps on the ends of their chromosomes which could point to a possible biological explanation for health problems often encountered by children with absent fathers.