Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-xtvcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-19T05:17:33.790Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Childhood parental loss and alcoholism in women: a causal analysis using a twin-family design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

K. S. Kendler ,
M. C. Neale ,
C. A. Prescott ,
R. C. Kessler ,
A. C. Heath ,
L. A. Corey  and
L. J. Eaves
K. S. Kendler*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human Genetics, Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA; the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA
M. C. Neale
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human Genetics, Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA; the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA
C. A. Prescott
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human Genetics, Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA; the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA
R. C. Kessler
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human Genetics, Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA; the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA
A. C. Heath
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human Genetics, Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA; the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA
L. A. Corey
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human Genetics, Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA; the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA
L. J. Eaves
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Department of Human Genetics, Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA; the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA
*
1Address for correspondence: Dr Kenneth S. Kendler, PO Box 980710, Richmond, VA 23298–0710, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

Childhood parental loss may be an important risk factor for psychiatric illness in adulthood. While this association has been carefully examined for depression, little is known about the role of parental loss in predisposing to alcoholism. We examined an epidemiological sample of female twin pairs with the same history of continuity or disruption in parent–child relationships (N = 1018 pairs; mean age 30 years), using a range of definitions of alcoholism. Childhood parental loss through separation, but not death, substantially increased the risk in adulthood for all definitions of alcoholism. Furthermore, both paternal and maternal alcoholism substantially increased the probability of parental separation from their children. Proposing a structural equation twin-family model that incorporates childhood parental loss as a specified environmental risk factor, we examined how much of the association between childhood parental loss and alcoholism was causal (i.e. mediated by environmental factors) v. non-causal (mediated by genetic factors, with parental loss serving as an index of parental genetic susceptibility to alcoholism). Both the causal and non-causal paths were significant for all definitions of alcoholism. However, the causal–environmental pathway consistently accounted for most of the association. While a significant proportion of the association is due to non-causal genetic mechanisms, childhood parental loss (or the familial discord that precedes or follows it) is probably a direct and significant environmental risk factor for the development of alcoholism in women.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , January 1996 , pp. 79 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Akaike, H. (1987). Factor analysis and AIC. Psychometrika 52, 317–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
American Psychiatric Association (1987). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd edn Revised. American Psychiatric Association: Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Block, J. H., Block, J. & Gjerde, P. F. (1986). The personality of children prior to divorce: a prospective study. Child Development 57, 827–840.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Breier, A., Kelsoe, J. R. Jr., Kirwin, P. D., Beller, S. A., Wolkowitz, O. M. & Pickar, D. (1988). Early parental loss and development of adult psychopathology. Archives of General Psychiatry 45, 87–993.Google Scholar
Cloninger, C. R. (1980). Interpretation of intrinsic and extrinsic structural relations by path analysis: theory and applications to assortative mating. Genetics Research 36, 133–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, J. (1960). A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement 20, 37–46.Google Scholar
Cotton, N. S. (1979). The familial incidence of alcoholism: a review. Journal of Studies of Alcohol 40, 89–116.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crook, T. & Eliot, J. (1980). Parental death during childhood and adult depression: a critical review of the literature. Psychological Bulletin 87, 252–259.Google Scholar
Eaves, L. J., Heath, A. C. & Martin, N. G. (1984). A note on the generalized effects of assortative mating. Behavior Genetics 14, 371–376.Google Scholar
Eaves, L. J., Eysenck, H. J., Martin, N. G., Jardine, R., Heath, A. C., Feingold, L., Young, P. A. & Kendler, K. S. (1989) Genes, Culture and Personality: An Empirical Approach. Oxford University Press: London.Google Scholar
Endicott, J., Andreasen, N. & Spitzer, R. L. (1978). Family History Research Diagnostic Criteria. Biometrics Research, New York State Psychiatric Institute: New York.Google Scholar
Falconer, D. S. (1965). The inheritance of liability to certain diseases, estimated from the incidence among relatives. Annals of Human Genetics 29. 51–76.Google Scholar
Faravelli, C., Webb, T., Ambonetti, A., Fonnesu, F. & Sessarego, A. (1985). Prevalence of traumatic early life events in 31 agoraphobic patients with panic attacks. American Journal of Psychiatry 142, 1493–1494.Google ScholarPubMed
Fulker, D. W. (1988). Path analysis of genetic and cultural transmission in human behavior.In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Quantitative Genetics (ed. Wier, B. S., Eisen, E. J., Goodman, M. M. and Namkoong, G.), pp. 318–340. Sinauer Associates Inc.: Sunderland, MA.Google Scholar
Gregory, I. (1958). Studies of parental deprivation in psychiatric patients. American Journal of Psychiatry 115, 432–442.Google Scholar
Harris, T., Brown, G. W. & Bifulco, A. (1986). Loss of parent in childhood and adult psychiatric disorder: the role of lack of adequate parental care. Psychological Medicine 16, 641–659.Google Scholar
Heath, A. C. (1987). The analysis of marital interaction in crosssectional twin data. Acta Geneticae Medicae et Gemellologiae 36, 41–49.Google Scholar
Heath, A. C. & Eaves, L. J. (1985). Resolving the effects of phenotype and social background on mate selection. Behaviour Genetics 15, 15–30.Google Scholar
Heath, A. C. & Neale, M. C., Hewitt, J. K., Eaves, L. J. & Fulker, D. W. (1989). Testing structural equation models for twin data using LISREL. Behavior Genetics 19, 9–35.Google Scholar
Helzer, J. E., Burnam, A. & McEvoy, L. T. (1991). Alcohol abuse and dependence. In Psychiatric Disorders in America: The Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study (ed. Robins, L. N. and Regier, D. A.), pp. 81–115. The Free Press: New York.Google Scholar
Hetherington, E. M. (1989). Coping with family transitions: winners, losers, and survivors. Child Development 60, 1–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Joreskog, K. G. & Sorbom, D. (1988). PRELIS: A Preprocessor for LISREL. Scientific Software: Mooresville, IN.Google Scholar
Keith, V. M. & Finlay, B. (1988). The impact of parental divorce on children's educational attainment, marital timing, and likelihood of divorce. Journal of Marriage and the Family 50, 797–809.Google Scholar
Kendler, K. S. (1990). Familial risk factors and the familial aggregation of psychiatric disorders. Psychological Medicine 20, 311–320.Google Scholar
Kendler, K. S. (1993). Twin studies of psychiatric illness: current status and future directions. Archives of General Psychiatry 50, 905–915.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kendler, K. S., Heath, A. C., Neale, M. C., Kessler, R. C. & Eaves, L. J. (1992 a). A population-based twin study of alcoholism in women. Journal of the American Medical Association 268, 1877–1882.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kendler, K. S., Neale, M. C., Kessler, R. C., Heath, A. C. & Eaves, L. J. (1992 b). A population based twin study of major depression in women: the impact of varying definitions of illness. Archives of General Psychiatry 49, 257–266.Google Scholar
Kendler, K. S., Neale, M. C., Heath, A. C., Kessler, R. C. & Eaves, L. J. (1994). A twin-family study of alcoholism in women. American Journal of Psychiatry 151, 707–715.Google ScholarPubMed
Loehlin, J. C. (1987). Latent Variable Models: An Introduction to Factor, Path, and Structural Analysis. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Hillsdale, NJ.Google Scholar
Martin, N. G., Eaves, L. J., Kearsey, M. J. & Davies, P. (1978). The power of the classical twin study. Heredity 40, 97–116.Google Scholar
McCord, W. & McCord, J. (1960). The Origins of Alcoholism. Tavistock: London.Google Scholar
McGue, M. (1994). Genes, environment and the etiology of alcoholism. In The Development of Alcohol Problems: Exploring the Biopsychosocial Matrix of Risk (ed. Costello, C. G.), pp. 1–40. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism: Washington, DC.Google Scholar
McGue, M. & Lykken, D. T. (1992). Genetic influence on risk of divorce. Psychological Science 3, 368–373.Google Scholar
McLeod, J. D. (1991). Childhood parental loss and adult depression. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 32, 205–220.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merikangas, K. R. (1990). The genetic epidemiology of alcoholism. Psychological Medicine 20, 11–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neale, M. C. (1991). Statistical Modelling with Mx. Box 980710, Richmond VA 23298: Department of Psychiatry: Richmond, VA.Google Scholar
Neale, M. C. & Cardon, L. R. (1992). Methodology for Genetic Studies of Twins and Families. Kluwer Academic Publishers BV: Dordrecht, The Netherlands.Google Scholar
Neale, M. C., Heath, A. C., Hewitt, J. K., Eaves, L. J. & Fulker, D. W. (1989). Fitting genetic models with LISREL: hypothesis testing. Behavior Genetics 19, 37–49.Google Scholar
Pearson, K. (1991). Mathematical contributions to the theory of evolution. VIII. On the correlation of characters not quantitatively measurable. Proceedings of the Royal Society 66, 241–244.Google Scholar
Pickens, R. W., Svikis, D. S., McGue, M., Lykken, D. T., Heston, L. L. & Clayton, P. J. (1991). Heterogeneity in the inheritance of alcoholism. Archives of General Psychiatry 48, 19–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Plomin, R. & DeFries, J. C. (1985). Origins of Individual Differences in Infancy: The Colorado Adoption Project. Academic Press, Inc.: Orlando, FL.Google Scholar
Rao, D. C., Morton, N. E. & Yee, S. (1976). Resolution of cultural and biological inheritance by path analysis. American Journal of Human Genetics 28. 228–242.Google ScholarPubMed
Raskin, M., Peeke, H. V. S., Dickman, W. & Pinsker, H. (1982). Panic and generalized anxiety disorders: developmental antecedents and precipitants. Archives of General Psychiatry 39, 687–689.Google Scholar
Robins, L. N. (1966). Deviant Children Grown Up. Williams & Wilkins: Baltimore.Google Scholar
Roy, A. (1985). Early parental separation and adult depression. Archives of General Psychiatry 42, 987–991.Google Scholar
Rutter, M. (1981). Maternal Deprivation Reassessed, 2nd edn.Penguin Books: London, England.Google Scholar
SAS Institute (1985). SAS Users Guide: Statistics, Version 5. SAS Institute, Inc.: Cary, NC.Google Scholar
St Claire, L. & Osborn, A. F. (1987). The ability and behaviour of children who have been ‘in-care’ or separated from their parents. Early Child Development and Care 28, Monograph No. 3.Google Scholar
Spence, J. E., Corey, L. A., Nance, W. E., Marazita, M. L., Kendler, K. S. & Schieken, R. M. (1988). Molecular analysis of twin zygosity using VNTR DNA probes. American Journal of Human Genetics 43, A159.Google Scholar
Spitzer, R. L., Williams, J. B. & Gibbon, M. (1987). Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R. Biometrics Research Department, New York State Psychiatric Institute: New York.Google Scholar
Tennant, C. (1988). Parental loss in childhood: its effect in adult life. Archives of General Psychiatry 45, 1045–1050.Google Scholar
Tennant, C. & Bernardi, E. (1988). Childhood loss in alcoholics and narcotic addicts. British Journal of Addiction 83, 695–703.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tennant, C., Hurry, J. & Bebbington, P. (1982). The relation of childhood separation experiences to adult depressive and anxiety states. British Journal of Psychiatry 141, 475–482.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tweed, J. L., Schoenbach, V. J., George, L. K. & Blazer, D. G. (1989). The effects of childhood parental death and divorce on six-month history of anxiety disorders. British Journal of Psychiatry 154 823–828.Google Scholar
Vaillant, G. E. (1983). The Natural History of Alcoholism: Causes, Patterns, and Paths to Recovery. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Van Eerdewegh, P. (1982). Statistical Selection in Multivariate Systems with Applications in Quantitative Genetics. Ph.D. thesis, Washington University: St Louis.Google Scholar
von Knorring, A. L., Cloninger, C. R., Bohman, M. & Sigvardsson, S. (1983). An adoption study of depressive disorders and substance abuse. Archives of General Psychiatry 40, 943–950.Google Scholar