The impact of family environment on the development of alcohol dependence

Alcoholism is a family disease. Many studies confirm that a family history of alcoholism is associated with the development of later alcohol dependence. The aim of this study is to analyze the impact of family structure and relations between its members in the development of alcohol addiction in children grown up in these families.

The research study was based on authors` anonymous questionnaire including questions referring to: family structure, parents' divorce, prevalence of alcoholism in the family, parents' attitude towards alcohol and parent-child relationships. The study group consisted of 125 people, 83 men and 42 women, aged from 22 to 68 participating in treatment programs for alcohol addiction. The control group consisted of 231 people, 136 men and 95 women, age from 17 to 65, with no history of alcoholism.

The study group participants stated less frequently that they had been raised by both parents (78% vs 87%, p<0.05). In this group one of the parents significantly more frequently abused alcohol (43% vs 19%; p<0.05) or both parents abused alcohol (15% vs 1%; p<0.05). The participants also claimed to be more often punished for their failures, abused physically/verbally and could less often depend on their parents.

Based on these results we concluded that patients addicted to alcohol were more often raised by a single parent, they were more likely to have alcohol-dependent parents and relationships with their parents were more often impaired.