Identifying Developmental Psychopathology among Children of Alcohol Dependent Fathers

Abstract

Children of Alcohol Dependent fathers are at biological and environmental risk for a variety of social, emotional, and behavioural problems. The adversities that a child goes through is often not easy especially when there is always a sense of uncertainty prevailing in the home environment. When children spend their early years in a less stimulating in the form of emotional or if there is lack of physically supportive environment, brain development gets affected and later in life, these children have difficulty dealing with complex situations and environments making them more vulnerable to developmental psychopathology. Materials and Methods: A sample of 200 was collected being divided into two groups with one group consisting 100 samples of mother or caregiver of children whose father has been diagnosed with Alcohol Use Disorder(AUD) attending the outpatient and inpatient department of Psychiatry, Regional Institute of Medical Sciences. The other group consisting of 100 was of children whose father’s did not had any kind of Substance Dependence. Socio Demographic details Performa and Developmental Psychopathology Check List was being administered. Statistical analysis in the form of Chi- square test, independent t-test of correlation was carried out to examine the relationship of various variables. Results: Among the children whose father’s has AUD indicates that Emotional Disorders has the highest rate of high-risk symptoms (35%) followed by Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with 23% and Conduct Disorder (CD) with 13%. The comparative study between the two group indicated significant difference with regard to ADHD (p-value=0.003), CD (p-value=0.000) and Emotional Disorder (p-value=0.001). Conclusion: The findings have established that ADHD and Conduct disorders which are a part of externalising behaviours were observed to be at high risk among children of AUD father similarly, internalising behaviour which primarily includes emotional disorders was predominant.