Amid Michigan overdose epidemic, push is on to support kids whose parents died

• Drug overdoses have killed more than 12,000 people in Michigan since 2020
• Many children survivors don’t receive adequate help, so researchers are trying to map holes in services
• ‘The quality of bereavement services should not be determined by ZIP code,’ one researcher says

This story is excerpted from a longer one produced by MindSite News, the nation’s only news site focused on mental health reporting. Sign up for the MindSite News newsletter here.

Michigan is teaming with academic researchers to identify children whose parents died of drug overdoses to give them the help they need.

Last year, Michigan launched a website that allows users to search for grief support and other bereavement resources by ZIP code. HopeHQ, a joint project of Wayne State University and the University of Michigan, provides information on resources for grieving children and their caregivers who have experienced the death of a parent or family member from a drug overdose. 

Now, researchers are seeking to map “bereavement service deserts” where grieving children and families have few or no local resources. 

“We really need to know where those deserts are, so that we can reach them and deliver services that will improve their health,” said Sean Esteban McCabe, director of U-M’s Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking and Health.

“The quality of bereavement services should not be determined by the ZIP code where you live.”

He is working with researcher Luisa Kcomt of Wayne State on the initiative that collects data on drug overdoses and other deaths through birth and death certificates and overlays them with  programs that serve bereaved children and families in each county. 

Related:

• How grieving survivors help shape Michigan drug policy
• The ‘day of death’: How a mystery drug, spate of ODs changed west Michigan
• Need addiction help? Michigan launches tool to find treatment options

Michigan’s website is part of the state’s 211 system providing critical information and directs people to a host of other providers.

“There was a need for a statewide system to support individuals dealing with the loss of a loved one,” Elizabeth Hertel, the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said in July. 

More than 12,000 people have died of drug overdoses in Michigan since 2020, and advocates say survivors have a deep need for connection.

Lucas Edward Cambpell was 13 years old when his mother died in March 2015 of cervical cancer. Beyond grief, he felt alone, not knowing anyone at school who had a similar loss.

He met some at Ele’s Place, a center for grieving children and teens in Ann Arbor. In one activity, the teen group decorated paper maché masks. On the outside, he painted a smiling face. Then the teens wrote what they were feeling on the inside. Lucas wrote “lonely.” 

“I realized a lot of these people are hiding the same things I’m hiding. I realized I’m not alone in this, what I’m feeling is OK,” said Lucas, now 23 and a volunteer at the center. “That is a very powerful memory that I have.”

Nationwide, the National Alliance for Children’s Grief lists nearly 400 locations that offer some form of peer-based grief support, including camps, centers, or hospice programs. The New York Life Foundation, the leading funder of family grief centers, spent about $8 million on childhood bereavement programs in 2023, enabling services to be provided free of charge.

Still, while grief centers do their best to meet the demand, even expanding with satellite locations, communities with the highest rates of parental deaths often lack the resources to help the children left behind.

Michigan’s work mirrors a project in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, home to Pittsburgh and surrounding suburbs. The county tracks and maps overdose deaths on a dashboard, and it has an integrated data system that includes child welfare and mental health services.

By matching parents’ names on death and birth certificates, county analysts reviewed records of 1,008 children who lost parents to overdose between 2017 and 2022 during a five-year period. 

While 1 in 14 were already involved with the child welfare system when their parent died, that number doubled to 1 in 7 after five years, according to data provided by Allegheny County to MindSite News 2020 report published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics.

For children left behind after a parent’s fatal drug overdose, their individual use of mental health services increased for about six to nine months after the death and then returned to prior levels, an indication that their issues were treated with a short duration of therapy, said Erin Dalton, director of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services. 

The Allegheny analysts also looked at parental deaths due to homicide and suicide and found that children whose parents died by homicide were more likely to be Black and were much younger than those whose parents died of overdoses, Dalton said.

She said the department only offered grief support to children who were already involved with the child welfare system or other county services. 

“We have not taken the step of reaching out proactively to everyone who has lost a parent,” she said – due partly to concerns that families may be alarmed to be contacted by the county department that also runs child protective services.

This article was supported by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2024 National Fellowship and its Kristy Hammam Fund for Health Journalism and by the Commonwealth Fund.