Children Of Alcoholic Fathers : An Explorative Survey

Abstract

Children of alcoholic families are at greater
risk for poor psychosocial adjustments like guilt,
embarrassment, confusion, anger, depression, poor peer
relationship, school problems and health problems. The
study aimed to find out the Problems faced by the
children of alcoholic fathers attending selected deaddiction
centers in Mangalore, India. An explorative
survey approach was adopted for the study. In the
present study the sample consisted of 60 children( 10 to
14 years) of alcoholic fathers . The data collection tool
included Rating scale to assess the problems faced by the
children of alcoholic fathers, Observation checklist to
assess the physical health status of children and Baseline
Performa. Among 60 samples 16.6% had severe, 61.7%
moderate and 21.7% of them experienced mild degree of
problems due to their father’s alcoholism. The chisquare
values between degree of problems faced by the
children and selected variables like age, sex, birth order
of children, income of family, duration of father’s
alcoholism and treatment received for alcoholism were
not significant at 0.05. The focus of health practitioners
is directed towards primary prevention. The study
concluded that nursing personnel, who comes in closer
contact with the children of alcoholic fathers, can
identify the problems of these children and help them to
cope successfully with emotionally hazardous
experience.