Psychopathology in the Offspring of Alcoholic Parents

This paper reports the findings of two studies of children born to alcoholic parents. In the first study follow-up examinations were carried out in 30 children suffering from the fetal alcohol syndrome. In comparison with the initial assessment, the children had improved in their overall psychiatric status and psychological functioning at follow-up after 36 months, although some psychiatric features such as hyperactivity showed no significant change. Progress of development was independent of sex, age, social environment and therapeutic measures. In the second study children with either an alcoholic father or mother or two alcoholic parents and normal controls were compared with regard to symptoms, diagnoses, and past case history. All subjects attended the child psychiatric clinic. The heightened psychiatric risk for all children with alcoholic parents was clearly shown by this study. Based on questionnaire data and psychiatric symptom scores, it was not possible to differentiate between children with alcoholic fathers, alcoholic mothers and those with two alcoholic parents. With regard to psychiatric diagnoses there was a tendency for conduct disorders to correlate with paternal alcoholism and for emotional disorders to correlate with maternal alcoholism, but both types of disorders occurred with the same frequency among children with two alcoholic parents.