[NYAPRS Enews] Study: Daughters of Alcoholic Mothers Develop More MH Conditions

[Harvey Rosenthal]

Mom's Alcoholism Especially Tough On Daughter's Mental Health

Study Finds That Outcomes Are Worse For Daughters Of Affected Women, Vs.
Other Parent-Child Pairings

HealthDay News  July 20, 2010

 

The risk that children of an alcoholic parent run of developing a
psychiatric illness later in life may depend, in part, on their gender
and whether it was their mother or father who was alcohol-dependent, a
new study finds.

 
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more!The link appears to be strongest between mothers and daughters,
according to the new findings, says a team from Yale University.

It was already known that the adult children of alcoholic parents are at
increased risk for psychiatric illnesses, but the effects of child or
parent gender weren't well known.

The researchers analyzed data from more than 23,000 males and almost
17,400 females included in the U.S. National Epidemiological Survey on
Alcohol and Related Conditions.

The mother-daughter connection was most influential in increasing a
daughter's risk for mania, nicotine dependence, alcohol abuse and
schizoid personality disorder, the study found.

While not as strong, there was also increased risk of psychiatric
illnesses among the adult children of alcoholic parents in father-son,
father-daughter, and mother-son pairings.

The study appears online and in the October print issue of the journal
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

"The problems caused by alcoholism are not limited to the individual who
suffers from it. Children are particularly susceptible to the negative
effects of alcoholism in a parent, and adult children of alcoholics are
in general at much greater risk for developing every type of psychiatric
illness," study corresponding author Peter T. Morgan, an associate
professor of psychiatry at Yale, said in a journal news release.

"The key, new finding of this work is that the effect parental
alcoholism has on children is different depending on the gender of the
alcoholic parent and the gender of the child," he said. 

The study results are important in two ways, Morgan added.

"First, these findings reiterate how damaging alcoholism can be to the
mental health of children who grow up with an alcoholic parent," he
said. "Second, and particular to this study, these findings indicate
that in a family with an alcoholic mother, daughters may be at greater
relative risk for developing psychiatric problems. Such information
could be used to identify parents at potentially greater risk for
certain disorders and could be used to encourage reduction of substance
abuse in parents."

 

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/ar
ticles/2010/07/20/moms-alcoholism-especially-tough-on-daughters-mental-h
ealth.html 

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