Background:

Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) are highly prevalent, affecting 3.6% of the global population (Rehm, Mathers & Popova et al., 2009). AUDs impact on the physical (liver disease, brain damage and injuries) as well as psychological well-being of the affected individual. Furthermore, AUDs have a considerable impact on the affected individual's family, larger social circle and society as a whole. There is a considerable genetic component to AUDs with heritability estimates of ~50-60% (van den Bree, Johnson eta, 1998). As many as 15% of children report living with an alcoholic parent (US data reported by Grant, 2000) while 43% of Children of Alcoholic parents (CoAs) will themselves develop an AUD in adulthood (Grant, 2000). It is therefore important to understand the developmental pathways of alcohol use/ misuse in this high-risk population.

Children of Alcoholics:

CoAs have been consistently reported to have poorer academic achievement than children of non-alcoholic parents (non-CoAs) (e.g. Puttler, Zucker, Fitzgerald and Bingham, 1998; Diaz, Gual & Garcia et al., 2008). However, the evidence regarding impaired performance on cognitive assessments (e.g. WASI/WISC) is less clear, with some studies reporting worse full-scale, verbal and performance IQ in CoAs (e.g. Diaz, Gual & Garcia et al., 2008) (Yang & Kramer, 2012), while others report no difference (e.g. Kultur, Unal & Ozusta, 2006). There have been no studies based on a large scale longitudinal population-based sample.

One of the most consistently reported differences between children with and without alcoholic parents is increased problem behaviours. These include externalising and antisocial behaviours, as well as internalising and hyperactive behaviours. Externalising and antisocial behaviours have been reported in children with alcoholic parents from a very young age, even including infancy (Edwards, Eiden, Colder & Leonard, 2006). These behaviours then appear to persist throughout development into adolescence (Hussong, Huang & Curran et al., 2010). Internalising behaviours, such as negative affect and anxiety are less reliable reported. There have been some positive results in early childhood (Haugland, 2003), but the majority of studies have reported that internalising behaviours become more common in children with alcoholic parents during adolescence (Hussong, Cai & Curran et al., 2008). This increase during adolescence may be related to the onset of the child's own alcohol use.

There is some evidence that suggests that maternal and paternal alcohol use can have differential effects on offspring (Connell & Goodman, 2002) and that offspring gender can influence the impact of parental alcohol use (Eisenberg, Haugen & Spinrad et al., 2010). Social factors, such as parental-offspring relationships and peers, can also influence the effect of parental alcohol use on the offspring (Stice & Barrera, 1995).

Current proposed study:

There is currently an absence of large population-based longitudinal studies which examine the associations between parental alcohol problem use and offspring behaviour. While there have been a number of small-scale longitudinal studies using high-risk populations (e.g. Chassin, Rogosch & Barrera, 1991; Eiden, Edwards, Colder & Leonard, 2009) and some larger population-based comparative studies (e.g. Yang & Kramer, 2012), there have been no studies which have the breadth of information available in the ALSPAC data set.

We propose to use already collected ALSPAC data to address the important issue of parental alcoholism. We will compare with and without alcoholic parents in the areas of cognition, behaviour, psychiatric problems and substance use. Additional analysis will be used to see if offspring's own alcohol use contributes to any differences we find and to see if parent or offspring gender and offspring's peer group also have an impact.

Aims:

1. Conduct comparisons between CoAs and nonCoAs at an early age (i.e. age 8), before alcohol use initiation, on relevant indices reported in the literature, including behaviour, academic performance and cognition, social factors (family and peer relations), and mental health problems.

Sub aims: examine any evidence for gender-specific effects (i.e., parent or offspring)

2. Conduct similar comparisons at later ages (i.e. 8-15), when participants are increasingly starting to use alcohol. Here comparisons will also include alcohol and other substance use at different ages.

3. Examine the longitudinal alcohol use/ misuse trajectories for CoAs and non-CoAs and to what extent specific covariates (see above) play a role in any differences.

Analyses:

Analysis 1 and 2. ANOVAs, chi-square tests, or regressions where CoA (yes/ no) is the dependent variable.

Analysis 3. Trajectories already exist. Each individual in the sample has been assigned a probability of belonging to different categories based on repeated measures of alcohol use collected at different ages. We will plot the trajectories for the two groups. We will conduct regression-based analysis to determine whether CoAs are more likely to belong to certain alcohol trajectories compared to non-CoAs, before and after adjustment for covariates.

References:

Chassin, L, Rogosch, F, & Barrera, M. (1991). Substance use and symptomatology among adolescent children of alcoholics. Journal of abnormal psychology 100(4), 449-463.

Connell, A.M., & Goodman, S.H (2002). The Association Between Psychopathology in Fathers Versus Mothers and Children's Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviour Problems: A Meta-Analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 128 (5), 746-773.

Diaz, R., Gual, A., Garcia, M., Arnau, J., Pascual, F., Canuelo, B., & Garbayo, I. (2008). Children of alcoholics in Spain: From risk to pathology. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 43(1), 1-10.

Edwards, E. P., Eiden, R. D., Colder, C., & Leonard, K. E. (2006). The Development of Aggression in 18 to 48 Month Old Children of Alcoholic Parents. Journal of abnormal child psychology, 34(3), 409-423.

Eiden, R. D., Colder, C., Edwards, E. P., & Leonard, K. E. (2009). A longitudinal study of social competence among children of alcoholic and nonalcoholic parents: Role of parental psychopathology, parental warmth, and self-regulation. Psychology of addictive behaviors, 23(1), 36-46.

Grant, B.F. (2000). Estimates of US Children Exposed to Alcohol Abuse and Dependence in the Family. American Journal of Public Health, 90 (1), 112-115.

Haugland, B. S. M. (2003). Paternal alcohol abuse: Relationship between child adjustment, parental characteristics, and family functioning. Child psychiatry and human development 34(2), 127-146.

Heron, J., Macleod, J., Munafo, M. R., Melotti, R., Lewis, G., Tilling, K., & Hickman, M. (2012). Patterns of alcohol use in early adolescence predict problem use at age 16. Alcohol and alcoholism, 47(2), 169-177.

Hussong, A. M., Cai, L., Curran, P. J., Flora, D. B., Chassin, L. A., & Zucker, R. A. (2008). Disaggregating the distal, proximal, and time-varying effects of parent alcoholism on children's internalizing symptoms. Journal of abnormal child psychology 36(3), 335-346.

Hussong, A. M., Huang, W., Curran, P. J., Chassin, L., & Zucker, R. A. (2010). Parent alcoholism impacts the severity and timing of children's externalizing symptoms. Journal of abnormal child psychology, 38(3), 367-380.

Kultur, S. E. C., Unal, M. F., & Ozusta, S. (2006). Psychopathology in children of alcoholic fathers. Turk Psikiyatri Dergisi, 17(1), 3-11.

Puttler, L. I., Zucker, R. A., Fitzgerald, H. E., & Bingham, C. R. (1998). Behavioral outcomes among children of alcoholics during the early and middle childhood years: Familial subtype variations. Alcoholism: clinical and experimental research, 22(9), 1962-1972.

Rehm, J., Mathers, C., Popova, S., Thavorncharoensap, M., Teerawattananon,Y., & Patra, J. (2009). Global burden of disease and injury and economic cost attributable to alcohol use and alcohol-use disorders. Lancet, 373, 2223-2233.

Stice, E., & Barrera, M. (1995). A longitudinal examination of the reciprocal relations between perceived parenting and adolescents' substance use and externalizing behaviours. Developmental psychology, 31(2), 322-334.

van den Bree, M., Johnson, E. O., Neale, M. C., & Pickens, R. W. (1998). Genetic and environmental influences on drug use and abuse/dependence in male and female twins. Drug and alcohol dependence, 52(3), 231-241.

Yang, S., & Kramer, M. S. (2012). Paternal alcohol consumption, family transition and child development in a former Soviet country. International Journal of Epidemiology, 41(4), 1086-1096.