Familial Characteristics of Adolescents Vulnerable to Subsequent Antisocial Disorders (From Prospective Studies of Crime and Delinquency, P 375-387, 1983, Katherine T Van Dusen and Sarnoff A Mednick, ed. - See NCJ-91219)

• NCJ Number: 91235
• Author(s): J A Doane; M J Goldstein
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 13 pages
• Sale Source: Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing,Boston
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examines whether intrafamilial variables can discriminate among three different types of psychiatric outcome: normal or neurotic persons, those with an antisocial personality, and those with a nonantisocial, schizophrenia-like disorder.

Abstract

Sixty-five moderately disturbed male and female adolescents and their parents participated in the study. Findings were derived from a discussion between the adolescent and his/her mother, a discussion between the adolescent and his/her father, and a family discussion involving the adolescent and both parents. In these discussions, the participants were asked to explore a problem that had been previously identified as unique to their family situation. The procedure was designed to elicit an emotionally charged discussion between the participants. There was a modest relationship found between the form of adolescent psychopathology and type of early adult psychiatric disturbance. Persons with antisocial features were likely to have been actively aggressive as teenagers. A second finding was that a relatively benign or low-key style of expressing affective messages to the child is characteristic of both the mothers and fathers of cases who were in neither the antisocial group or the schizophrenia-spectrum group. Finally, the different patterns seen in the data for the two poor-outcome groups suggests that both parental and child characteristics are important in predicting outcome. Tabular data and seven references are provided.