Influence of parental alcoholism on suicidal and personality-psychological characteristics of offspring

Abstract

This article is a review of literature data, devoted to the influence of alcohol dependence of parents on the suicidal and personality-psychological characteristics of their offspring. Despite a decline of the incidence of alcohol dependence in the population, in Russia about 15-50% of families can say that they have encountered the problem of an alcoholized parent. Adult children of alcoholics (ACAs) are a fairly extensive, highly autoaggressive stratum of society. This group of people is the most dangerous in terms of the frequency of development in them of various kinds of addictions, as well as the likelihood of committing a suicidal attempt. The purpose of this review was to present modern ideas about the suicidality of adult children of alcoholics, their socio-cultural characteristics, personality and psychological characteristics; to demonstrate the degree of influence of addictive parental figures on the antivitality of offspring and its formation. The analysis of English and Russian literature is carried out. We have convincingly demonstrated that the ACAs represents a group with an elevated, relative to normative population, autoaggressiveness, inclination to parasuicidal patterns, with difficulties in building relationships with the society and finding a place in it. Conclusions were made about the inadequacy of the studies conducted, the lack of accurate data on the transgenerational mechanisms of autoaggressive transmission to offspring, the factors influencing the heterogeneity of the ACAs a population-species group, the need to take into account the gender of both parents and the ACAs themselves.