Psychopathology and psychosocial functioning in adult male offspring of depressed or alcoholic parents

The relationship between both parental depression and alcohol problems with psychological functioning in adult, male offspring was examined in this secondary analysis of 3083 male twin pairs, aged 34-53 years. Previous literature documents a relationship between parental depression or alcoholism and pathology in school-aged offspring. It was hypothesized in this study that a similar relationship would remain evident in a sample of adult offspring.;The Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) had been administered to each twin pair as well as items on the presence or absence of parental depression or alcohol problems. Twin pairs were given a composite score of 0-2 on each of these independent variables. A score of 2 indicated that twins agreed on the presence of the parental dysfunction, 1 indicated disagreement, and 0 was scored when both agreed that a parent did not evidence the dysfunction. The DIS provides DSMIII-R criteria based symptom assessments which were used to create an average score for each twin pair on the following dependent variables: anxiety, depression, alcohol abuse, antisocial personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and retrospective data on juvenile conduct disorder. Additional scales were devised to assess suicidality, employment instability, and relationship instability.;Analyses on parental depression using ANOVAs, ANCOVAs, and Pearson Correlations indicated that both maternal and paternal depression were significantly correlated with offspring depression, anxiety, alcohol problems, suicidality, employment instability and antisocial personality disorder. In addition maternal depression had a small but significant correlation with relationship instability. Maternal depression was more correlated with twin depression and anxiety than was paternal depression.;Maternal and paternal alcohol problems were both significantly correlated to offspring depression, anxiety, alcohol problems, suicidality, employment instability, and antisocial personality disorder. Paternal alcohol problems were also related to post-traumatic stress disorder in offspring. Paternal alcohol problems were more correlated with offspring depression, alcohol problems, and employment instability than were maternal alcohol problems.;In general, parental depression was more correlated with psychopathology in offspring than were parental alcohol problems.;The results provide evidence that the associations between parental depression and alcoholism with problems in offspring are clearly evident in adult offspring.