Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T13:37:18.344Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Family Data Concerning the Hypothesis of Hereditary Predisposition Toward Alcoholism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

Ian Gregory
Ian Gregory*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis 14
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

There is evidence of unduly high frequencies of alcoholism, psychopathy and criminality among the relatives of alcoholics. Åmark (1951) found a frequency of alcoholism among the brothers and fathers of 645 Swedish alcoholics to be about 25 per cent. (Fremming's estimate of alcoholism among 1,730 males from the Danish population being 3·4 per cent.). In a more recent study of family data on 1,000 patients admitted to a Canadian mental hospital that included 56 patients with alcoholism, the present author (Gregory, 1959) found a recorded history of excessive drinking among 23·2 per cent. of the fathers of the alcoholics, among 1·8 per cent. of the mothers, and among 4·2 per cent. of their siblings. Allowing for the age and sex of these siblings, it would appear that there was a lifetime expectancy of excessive drinking of at least 14 per cent. among the brothers of these alcoholic patients. These figures compare with a minimal estimated lifetime expectancy of alcoholism amounting to 1·6 per cent. of the total population, or at least 2·7 per cent of the corresponding male population of Ontario.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 106 , Issue 444 , July 1960 , pp. 1068 - 1072
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1960 

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

Åmark, C., “A study in alcoholism. Clinical, social-psychiatric and genetic investigations”, Acta Psychiat., 1951, Suppl. 70.Google Scholar
Bakan, D., “The relationship between alcoholism and birth rank”, Quart. J. Stud. Alc., 1949, 10, 434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bleuler, M., in: Etiology of Chronic Alcoholism. Edited by Diethelm, O., Springfield, Illinois, C. C. Thomas, 1955, pp. 125 and 171.Google Scholar
Fremming, K. H., “The expectation of mental infirmity in a sample of the Danish population”, Occasional Papers on Eugenics. No. 7. 1951. Eugenics Society and Cassell ' Co. Ltd., p. 37.Google Scholar
Greenwood, M. Jr., and Yule, G. U., “On the determination of family size and of the distribution of characters in order of birth”, J. Roy. Statist. Soc., 1914, 77, 179.Google Scholar
Gregory, I., “An analysis of familial data on psychiatric patients”, Brit. J. Prev. Soc. Med., 1958, 12, 42.Google Scholar
Idem , “An analysis of family data on 1,000 patients admitted to a Canadian mental hospital”, Acta genet., 1959, 9, 54.Google Scholar
Kallmann, F. J., in: American Handbook of Psychiatry, 1959. Edited by Arieti, S., Vol. I, p. 186. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Google Scholar
Williams, R. J., et al., “Identification of blood characteristics common to alcoholic males”, Science, 1957, 126, 1237.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.