Study found no regrets among parents who talked to their dying children about death.

2004 OCT 7 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Should parents talk to their dying children about death?

A Swedish study found that parents whose children died of cancer had no regrets about talking to them about death, while some who didn't do so were sorry later.

Many doctors and medical organizations encourage parents to discuss death with terminally ill children because they believe it helps the child. But little research has been done on such a difficult subject. Indeed, the Swedish researchers said they met resistance while seeking approval for their study from colleagues who feared they would reopen painful memories for parents. But most of the parents contacted agreed to take part.

"The most important message is that no parent regretted having talked about death with their child," said Ulrika Kreicbergs, the study's lead researcher and a nurse at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Lawrence Wolfe, MD, a child cancer specialist in Boston, said the study will help physicians guide parents who are unsure about broaching the subject with their children. He said parents naturally want to shield their children or have a hard time themselves accepting that their child will die. But he said such discussions ease children's fears and let them prepare for death in their own way.

"It is my conviction that even very young children have an idea that something very serious is happening," said Wolfe of the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts-New England Medical Center. "Mystery is usually worse than the truth."

The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Wolfe wrote an accompanying editorial.