Mothers Who Lose Child Custody Have Higher All-Cause Mortality

Decisions to remove children from their mothers ordinarily occur under extreme circumstances and have wide-ranging consequences; for example, mothers whose children are removed from their care have higher suicide rates. To examine whether overall increased maternal mortality was among these consequences, investigators analyzed registry data on sister pairs from 1974 families in Manitoba, Canada.

Each sister had a child born between 1992 and 2015, but only one sister had a child taken into custody by child protective services. Average follow-up lasted for approximately 8.5 years; the average age of mothers who died was 31.

Analyses adjusted for age, health, sociodemographic factors, and family characteristics and used inverse probability weigh…