A visitor of the exhibition Rembrandt‘s Hidden Self-Portraits look at the portrait was discovered by a team of art specialists led by Rembrandt expert Ernst van de Wetering. A Rembrandt self-portrait hidden for centuries after it was painted over by another artist went on show in Amsterdam. The 1634 self-portrait concealed for more than 300 years was displayed for the first time at the Rembrandt museum after years of painstaking restoration. Amsterdam. PHOTO – REUTERS

LONDON – Parents who experience the tragic death of a child are more likely to die earlier than other adults because of the stress and grief caused by their loss, according to a study. Mothers have a four-fold increase of dying from suicide or in automobile accidents within the first four years of losing their child, Danish researchers said on Friday. Fathers have double the normal risk.

„This causes a high-risk situation for the parents when they lose a child and it carries a substantial increased mortality, especially for mothers and especially related to unnatural causes of death,“ Dr Jorn Olsen told Reuters. The epidemiologist at the University of Aarhus in Denmark said the increased risk of dying continues for the women, who are 40 percent more likely to die within 18 years after their child than other mothers. Fathers have a lesser risk of an early death and it is restricted to the first fours years after their child‘s death.

Olsen and his team, who reported their research in The Lancet medical journal, attribute their findings to the psychological stress and grief parents experience. „Losing a child has been classified as one of the most extreme stresses that we know of,“ he said. Over the longer term, stress can cause high blood pressure which can lead to heart disease, increased susceptibility to infectious illnesses and changes in lifestyle such as smoking and alcohol consumption that can contribute to earlier natural or unnatural deaths.

„Our results showed that, overall, the death of a child aged younger than 18 years increased maternal mortality from all causes,“ said Olsen. „There is a tendency that the older the child (at the time of death) the stronger is the effect that we see.“ The researchers used Danish death registries from 1980-1996 to compare data on 20,000 parents who had lost a child and 293,000 parents who had not. They followed up both groups for a maximum of 18 years. Reuters