Alcohol use and mental distress in adults who grew up with parents with drug use problems. The interaction with socioeconomic status in The Tromsø Study.

Abstract

Introduction: Children are constantly exposed to parental substance abuse and get experiences that affects them for the rest of their lives. It´s estimated that between 4% and 12 % of children live together with a substance abusing parent and might experience unpredictability, arguing, violence amongst other in everyday life. There is a comprehensive amount of studies that has investigated how growing up with a substance abusing parent affects them as children, but fare less taking into account how they manage into adulthood. This study therefore aimed to investigate the sociodemographic factors amongst these adults, how their self-reported alcohol-use and symptoms of anxiety and depression was compared to the general population, and how social class affected alcohol-use and mental distress. Material and methods: Data used in this study came from the population that participated in The Tromsø Study: Tromsø 7 which was implemented from 2015-2016 and included 21083 volunteer participants, where 1576 of them reported to have a parent with problematic substance use. Using cross-sectional design these 1576 was investigated for sociodemographic factors, AUDIT-score was used to determine level of alcohol-use whereas HSCL-10-score was used to quantify their level of anxiety and depression. Results: 7.0 % of the population reported to have one or more parent with substance abuse, 36.2 % of them (n=530) had educational level above bachelor’s degree and 53.1 % (n=769) reported a household income above 750 000 NOK. They had a significantly higher AUDIT-score at 15.1 (SD 3.34) and a higher HSCL-10-score at 1.41 (SD 0.47) compared to the general population. Conclusion: Adults with reported parental substance abuse had a significantly higher level of education, higher rate of fulltime work and a higher level of income compared to the general population. They also reported a higher consume of alcohol and higher level of symptoms of anxiety and depression.