Alcoholism of parents and its impact on the psychological security of teenage children

Abstract

This study aimed to reveal the impact of parents' alcoholism on the psychological security of teenage children. The study sample consisted of (30) participants who were selected using a purposive sampling method: ten addicted fathers of which have been subjected to Alcohol Consumption Resulting Disorders Test (AUDIT), and ten of their teenage children, distributed equally between the sexes, compared to ten adolescents with non-addicted fathers. The ages of the adolescents from the two groups ranged between (14 and 18) year. Clinical interviews were conducted with them, in addition to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and the psychological security scale. The study adopted a quantitative qualitative research approach based on case studies, a psychological clinical study consisting of several sessions, and to ensure the validity of the hypotheses, a descriptive statistical approach was used. The results of the study revealed that there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between fathers’ alcoholism and the dimensions of psychological security among teenage children. The higher the father’s rate of alcohol abuse, the lower the level of psychological security among his teenage son. It also showed that there are statistically significant differences in the degree of psychological security among children of addicted parents compared to children of non-addicted parents. The results indicated that there were statistically significant differences in the feelings of emotional attraction, social belonging, and mood among children of addicted parents compared to the feelings of children of non-addicted parents. It also showed that there are statistically significant differences in the level of psychological security between teenage males and females who have addicted parents in favor of females.