Psychosocial adjustment of the offspring of psychiatric inpatients: the effect of alcoholic, depressive and schizophrenic parentage.

Abstract

While there is a growing body of literature describing the plight of being the child of a particular diagnostic group of psychiatrically ill parents, little is yet known about the comparable vulnerability of the children of various diagnostic groups. This study includes data collected on 90 psychiatric inpatients, their spouses and children. For each consecutive admission of fifteen male and fifteen female alcoholics with a child less than age 21, a schizophrenic and a depressive parent were matched by sex, age and time of admission. Data were collected on the parents and their children from the patient's chart and through a structured interview with the spouse. A medical history, Rutter's parental questionnaire on children's behaviour and the Randall-McClure behaviour checklist were filled out on 231 children. Some of the findings of the study include that the adjustment of the children based on checklist information is not affected by the psychiatric diagnosis of the parents; controlling for sibship size is important in this type of research; the boys of sick fathers score almost two times higher on the checklists compared to the boys of sick mothers. The results argue for the provision of coordinated services between adult and child psychiatry departments for the children of the psychiatrically ill parents.