Family Deviance Research Articles

Madness and the Family Before Freud: the View of the Mad-Doctors

The antipsychiatry movement of the 1960s, led in Britain by R. D. Laing, construed the bourgeois family as psychogenic, in particular blaming mothers for the double binds typical of schizophrenia. This article searches out the (partly) Freudian roots of such beliefs. Its main aim, however, is to offer a rapid survey of how psychiatric writing and practice had approached family dynamics from the time of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) up to the close of the Victorian era. It finds that in the pre-Freudian tradition, blame tended to be affixed to the deviant family member, and therapy was geared toward reintegrating that person within the bosom of the "normal" family.

Psychiatric disorders among American Indian and white youth in Appalachia: the Great Smoky Mountains Study.

This study examined prevalence of psychiatric disorders, social and family risk factors for disorders, and met and unmet needs for mental health care among Appalachian youth. All 9-, 11-, and 13-year-old American Indian children in an 11-county area of the southern Appalachians were recruited, together with a representative sample of the surrounding population of White children. Three-month prevalences of psychiatric disorders were similar (American Indian, 16.7%; White, 19.2%). Substance use was more common in American Indian children (9.0% vs 3.8% in White children), as was comorbidity of substance use and psychiatric disorder (2.5% vs 0.9%). American Indian poverty, family adversity (e.g., parental unemployment, welfare dependency), and family deviance (parental violence, substance abuse, and crime) rates were higher, but the rate of family mental illness, excluding substance abuse, was lower. Child psychiatric disorder and mental health service use were associated with family mental illness in both ethnic groups but were associated with poverty and family deviance only in White children. Despite lower financial barriers, American Indian children used fewer mental health services. This study suggests that poverty and crime play different roles in different communities in the etiology of child psychiatric disorder.

Social policy in rich and poor countries

Abstract To what extent can the dramatic differences in social policy efforts in rich and poor countries be accounted for by genuinely political explanations? The hypothesis that is advanced in this article rests upon the combination of two schools of thought in comparative social policy analysis: socioeconomic models which focus attention on levels of economic wealth, need and demand for social security, and models of a comparative‐historiographic and political‐institutionalist nature. Empirical applications of socio‐economic models with lagged dependent variables reveal the existence of two deviant families of nations: overspenders in social policy (such as overspenders of social‐democratic complexion and of Christian‐democratic composition) and underspenders (such as superpowers in East and West as well as Japan and East Germany). The residuals mat can be derived from these models are amenable to an explanation which resides in comparative‐historiographic political analysis of social policy.

Early family adversity as a precursor to narcotic addiction

This retrospective study examined differences among three groups of urban males in the prevalence of various family risk factors occurring before age 11 and their independent contributions to subsequent deviance. The groups included: narcotic addicts; never-addicted peer controls who were associates of the addicts at age 11; and never-addicted community controls not associated with the addicts. Sixty-four percent of the addicts, compared to slightly under 40% of both control groups, reportedly experienced one or more family risk factors involving deviant behavior among family members and family disruption before age 11. While community controls differed from addicts on both family deviance and disruption in family structure, peer controls differed from addicts only on disruption of family structure. For the total sample, both family deviance and family disruption experienced before age 11 were significantly associated with crime seventy level at age 11. Implications of these findings for future substance abuse research and intervention are discussed.

An adoption study of drug abuse/dependency in females

In a sample of 102 women who had been adopted at birth, drug abuse/dependency was found by log-linear analyses to have a major pathway of genetic etiology that started with a biologic parent with antisocial personality and led to an adoptee with conduct disorder and then through aggressivity to drug abuse/dependency, as well as from conduct disorder directly to drug abuse. This result was similar to findings from a male sample collected from the same agencies and at the same time, wherein antisocial biologic parents produced aggressive and conduct-disordered offspring, who in turn became drug abusers/dependents as adults. Results are compatible with family studies demonstrating that female drug abusers stem from deviant families and themselves demonstrate socially deviant behavior early in life. The present study shows that one element of familial factors is genetic, and that, in addition, the family environment directly affects behavior (aggressivity) that leads to drug abuse/dependency.

FAMILY DEVIANCE AND DELINQUENCY IN CHINA*

This research explores the relationship between family deviance and delinquency using survey data from Tianjin, a large city in China. We hypothesize that, similar to findings in the West, family deviance will be positively related to delinquency in China. We also hypothesize that the nature of the causal process linking these two variables will differ in certain respects from the pattern observed in Western nations, reflecting the unusually strong emphasis placed on family relations in Chinese society. The results of the analysis are mixed. Consistent with expectations, family deviance is positively related to official delinquency status, exhibiting indirect effects via family controls, moral commitments, and deviant associations, and direct effects that are likely to reflect family group pressures. We also discovered appreciable effects of friends' deviance, which runs counter to our hypothesis that the influence of family variables will significantly diminish the importance of peer associations. In general, our analysis indicates the key role of the family in explaining delinquent behavior in China, and it illustrates the utility of cross‐cultural research for assessing the generality of research findings and identifying new directions for criminological inquiry.

Child psychopathology and deviant family hierarchies

The association between child psychopathology and reversals in family hierarchies (where the child is seen as equal or higher in the hierarchy than the parental figures) were examined with the Madanes Family Hierarchy Test on a sample of 177 clinic-referred boys. Madanes' original findings of the association of substance use and deviant family hierarchy were replicated in this younger sample, (age 7 to 12). Boys diagnosed with Conduct Disorder reported significantly more deviant hierarchies while boys diagnosed with Overanxious Disorder reported significantly fewer deviant hierarchies. Follow-up results revealed some instability and lack of informant agreement, but the hierarchy measure was not confounded by age, race, SES, IQ, or parents' marital status.

Anorexia Nervosa in 51 Swedish Adolescents: Premorbid Problems and Comorbidity

Abstract Fifty-one teenage cases with anorexia nervosa (AN) were compared with 51 age-, sex-, and school-matched cases with respect to premorbid developmental, physical, and psychiatric problems and comorbidity at the time of examination. Almost half of the AN group consisted of the total population of AN cases in one birth cohort. There were more premorbid personality problems in the AN group. Obsessive compulsive problems were very common in this group, as was undue concern about physical appearance. Depressive symptoms during the course of the eating disorder were almost universal in the AN group, but it did not appear that such symptoms had preceded the eating disorder. It seems that there may be a number of subgroups with AN and that the majority of these can be better understood in the light of factors intrinsic to the patients themselves rather than in the context of deviant family interaction. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry, 1992, 31, 5:819–829.

Implications of criminal career research for the prevention of offending

In the Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development, 411 London males have been followed up from age 8 to age 32. Offending was only one element of a general syndrome of antisocial behaviour, which showed significant continuity from childhood to adulthood. The most important childhood (age 8–11) predictors of offending up to age 32 were: socio-economic deprivation, poor parenting, family deviance, school problems, hyperactivity-impulsivity-attention deficit, and antisocial child behaviour. A theory was proposed to explain these results, including criminal motivation, internalized beliefs about offending, and rational decision-making. It was concluded that the most hopeful methods of preventing offending were behavioural parent training and pre-school intellectual enrichment programmes.

Social policy in rich and poor countries: socio‐economic trends and political‐institutional determinants

Abstract. To what extent can the dramatic differences in social policy efforts in rich and poor countries be accounted for by genuinely political explanations? The hypothesis that is advanced in this article rests upon the combination of two schools of thought in comparative social policy analysis: socioeconomic models which focus attention on levels of economic wealth, need and demand for social security, and models of a comparative‐historiographic and political‐institution‐alist nature. Empirical applications of socio‐economic models with lagged dependent variables reveal the existence of two deviant families of nations: overspenders in social policy (such as overspenders of socialdemocratic complexion and of Christian democratic composition) and underspenders (such as the superpowers in East and West as well as Japan and East Germany). The residuals that can be derived from these models are amenable to an explanation which resides in comparative‐historiographic political analysis of social policy.

Family deviance and family disruption in childhood: Associations with maternal behavior and infant maltreatment during the first two years of life

AbstractA structured childhood history interview was administered to 50 low-income mothers of infants. Three levels of risk for infant maltreatment were represented in the sample, including 10 maltreatment cases. Maternal behavior at home was rated and factor analyzed when the infants were 12 months and 18 months old, yielding separate factors labelled maternal involvement and hostile-intrusiveness. Risk for maltreatment was strongly correlated with the overall adversity of the mother's childhood history. Maternal hostile-intrusive behavior was best accounted for by psychiatric disorder in the mother's own mother and poor peer relationships in childhood. Maternal involvement was negatively associated with a separate cluster of variables indexing family disruption and lack of supervision. The emergence of two separate clusters of associations — positive affective involvement and negative affective involvement — is related to similar two-dimensional results in studies of self-reported mood, infant attachment relationships, and peer relationships. Implications of a two-dimensional affective construct for future theorizing in developmental psychopathology are discussed.

Genetic strategies to determine the mode of 2n egg formation in diploid potatoes

In this study, nineteen diploid potato clones (Solanum spp. 2n=2x=24) were identified as 2n egg producers on the basis of fruit set in 2x–4x crosses. The segregation of three genes mapped close to the centromere, Got-1 (1.1 cM), Pgm-2 (2.0 cM), and Sdh-1 (8.3 cM), were analyzed in the tetraploid offspring in these 2x–4x crosses to discriminate between First Division Restitution (FDR) and Second Division Restitution (SDR) modes of 2n egg formation. The co-dominant nature of these markers lead to more precise estimates of the recombinational frequencies as a result of completely classifying the segregating progenies. 2x–4x data revealed a predominance of SDR mechanisms occurring in 20 of the 21 families analyzed. With a SDR mode established, half-tetrad analysis (HTA) of four distal loci, 6-Pgdh-3, Mdh-1, Pgi-1, and Aps-1, revealed two SDR segregation patterns in some of the families. One pattern fit the expectations for the distal arm position. The gene-centromere map distances based upon SDR modes in the families following this pattern, were generally close to 4x−2x (FDR) estimates suggesting similar recombination rates between micro- and mega-sporogenesis. Heterozygosity transmission, on average, was 39.1%. In the other segregation pattern, in which the diploid parents were derived from S. chacoense PI 230580, higher than expected homozygosity levels were found in the female 2n gametophyte populations. A post-meiotic doubling of the reduced megaspore, which generates homozygous 2n eggs, is suggested to operate in three families. The common genetic background of the diploid clones suggested a heritable nature of this mechanism. Pooled data from these three deviant families calculated that 1.8% of the heterozygosity was transmitted to the tetraploid progeny.

Predicting Assaultiveness in Psychiatric Inpatients: A Pilot Study

A sample of 87 psychiatric inpatients known to have been assaultive while in the hospital was contrasted with a matched group of nonviolent patients to identify the personal risk factors that distinguished the two groups. Data were collected using a personal history interview, a neurological examination, and an electroencephalogram. The four risk factors identified--neurological abnormality, history of violent crime, history of violent suicide attempts, and deviant family environment in childhood--were used to develop a statistical model predicting which subjects in a sample of newly admitted patients would become assaultive during the first three months after admission. The predicted classification of patients was found to be significantly related to subsequent assaultive behavior.

Factors which predict the persistence of aggressive conduct disorder.

Fifty-three boys with aggressive conduct disorder were followed up 2 years after their original examination. Twenty-four (45%) no longer had the disorder and were classified as improved. A discriminant function analysis identified characteristics of the boys and their families which accurately predicted the outcome for 85% of the boys. Among the predictors of persisting conduct disorder were a variety of antisocial or aggressive symptoms, firesetting, early age of onset and family deviance.

Indiscriminate mothering as a contextual factor in aggressive-oppositional child behavior: "damned if you do and damned if you don't".

Fifty-two mother-child dyads took part in a parent training program to modify coercive, antisocial child behavior. Prior to intervention, scores on 14 measures of mother-child interaction and on an index of maternal community contacts (known as "insularity") were obtained for each dyad. This index was used to divide the sample into two groups (noninsular n = 21; insular n = 31). The interactional measures were then compared between the groups. Insular mothers were more aversive and indiscriminate than noninsular mothers in their use of aversive behavior toward their children, while their children were more aversive than noninsular children, especially in response to aversive maternal behavior. It was concluded that research and therapeutic work with deviant families should focus not only on immediate family interactions but also on the extrafamily environment in which these interactions take place.

Social deviance in a day hospital.

A search was made of records available for 65 nonpsychotic patients referred to a psychiatric day hospital. Assessments were made of whether they had shown various specified types of deviant social conduct, such detailed objective surveys of social conduct being regarded as superior to the use of concepts such as "psychopathic personality". The correlational structures of the areas of deviance produced four factors, i.e. deviant family roles, poor social integration, violence, and a more heterogeneous antisocial behaviour factor. The relationship was examined between areas of deviance and indices of the course and outcome of day hospital admission. The prognostic significance of social deviance was different for men and women; for example, only men showed a correlation between the number of areas of social deviance and the outcome of day hospital admissions. Violence and poor social integration showed no relation to outcome at all. It is suggested that there is no basis for excluding such patients from day hospitals on the assumption that they are less likely to be helped than other non-psychotic patients.

Family-focused management: Treatment of choice for deviant and dependent families

Abstract Helping professionals working with troubled families takes two approaches. One approach, noting that the identified patient's family's behavioral interactions have positive and negative effects on the patient and his symptoms, advocates involving family members in the treatment process. The other approach, noting that the identified patient alone has the power to resolve his problem, advocates treating the patient independently of the family. This latter approach, in effect, relieves family members of the painful feelings of responsibility. At first glance, these two approaches appear to be in conflict, and it is no wonder that professionals choose to remain with one or the other. Both points of view are valid, so that approaches need to be developed which incorporate both.

The therapeutic community: multivariate prediction of retention.

Multiple regression procedures were employed to study the profile of resident time in program, demographic, sociobackground, and psychological variables in relationship to retention. The sample consisted of 809 Phoenix House residents who were primarily male (81.4%) and Black (64.9%). A psychological battery was administered on a cross-sectional basis. The multiple R of .44 and R2 of .19 were large for this type of research. Time in program accounted for over half the variance explained. Ten other measures contributed significantly to the explained variance. Residents who dropped out were less likely to be Blacks and more often came from lower SES families but with less family deviance; they made fewer prior attempts at giving up drugs and had lower education levels. Psychologically, they were generally more defensive and disturbed.

Family Deviance and Schizophrenia

Family Deviance and Schizophrenia

Defensive and supportive communications in normal and deviant families.

Defensive and supportive communications in normal and deviant families.