hildren growing up in single-parent families are twice as likely as their counterparts in two-parent families to develop serious psychiatric illnesses and addictions later in life, a Swedish study has found.

The question of why and how those children end up with such problems remains unanswered. The study suggests that financial hardship may play a role, but some experts question that finding.

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Experts say the study, published this week in the British medical journal The Lancet, is convincing because it is unprecedented in scale and follow-up. It tracked about a million children for a decade, into their mid-20's.

The study used the Swedish national registries, which cover almost the entire population and provide extensive socioeconomic and health data.

Children were considered to be living in a single-parent household if they were living with the same single adult in the housing censuses of both 1985 and 1990. About 65,000 were living with their mother or their father, some 921,000 with both parents.

The scientists found that children with single parents were twice as likely as the others to develop a psychiatric illness like severe depression or schizophrenia, to commit suicide or try to, and to develop an alcohol-related disease.