Mortality, Suicide, Social Maladjustment and Criminality among Male Alcoholic Parents and Men from the General Population and their Offspring

ABSTRACT

In a 15-year longitudinal prospective examination of the subsequent life and development of parents and children of 211 male alcoholic inpatients (the probands), we compared them with a simple random sample of 200 men from Greater Stockholm (the controls) and their children. The group of male alcoholic inpatients and the random sample were subdivided with respect to alcohol consumption and use of hepatotoxic drugs: (IA) men from the random sample with low or moderate alcohol consumption and no use of drugs (n = 169); (IB) men from the random sample with low or moderate alcohol consumption with use of drugs (n = 31); (IIA) alcoholic inpatients with use of alcohol but no drugs (n= 171); (IIB) alcoholic inpatients with use of alcohol and drugs (n = 40). Groups IB and IIB had more psychosocial problems than the men of the other groups. They had grown up in families with more abuse of alcohol and drugs, an alcohol-abusing father and mother and had taken up their parents' concomitant drug and alcohol abuse by parental influences. There were differences in social adjustment and health status between the children from alcoholic homes and the control children. Social assistance was required to a greater extent by the proband groups and especially those from group IIB and the control children from group IB, who were registered in the Temperance Register and the Criminal Offenders Register and with the child welfare authorities more often than the control children of group IA. The proband children and the children of group IB were also registered for sick-leave more often than the control boys and girls of group IA and accounted for a larger number of visits to the wards and outpatient clinics for somatic symptoms and to psychiatric clinics and wards. The two groups IB, from the general population, and IIB, from the alcoholic inpatients, were like ‘twin’ groups in that they were equally often involved in crimes with drugs and their children's social maladjustment and health status resembled each other.