Alcohol Dependence
            Children at Risk for Alcoholism
    

The Harvard Medical School Mental Health Letter, August 1989

 
In a study of more than 400 Swedish boys and girls, researchers have found that 
the children most likely to become alcohol abusers are relatively fearless, 
constantly in search of novelty, and relatively indifferent to other people's 
opinions of them. The subjects were examined at age 11 and again at age 27. 
Their personalities were given a rating of one to seven on three scales: novelty 
seeking, harm avoidance, and reward dependence. A novelty-seeking child is 
curious, excitable, talkative, quick-tempered, and easily bored. A child low in 
harm avoidance is confident, assertive, uninhibited, and outgoing. A child with 
low reward dependence seems tough and emotionally cool. 
All of these three sets of personality traits were strongly associated with 
alcoholism among the boys, 30 of whom were alcohol abusers at the age of 27 
(only two of the 198 girls were). Low reward dependence alone did not raise the 
risk of alcoholism after correlations with other personality traits were 
subtracted. But boys with the highest scores for novelty-seeking had more than 
twice the average rate of alcoholism as adults, and boys with the lowest scores 
for harm avoidance had three times the average rate of alcoholism. Alcoholism 
rates ranged from 1 percent among boys who were very low in novelty-seeking and 
average in harm avoidance, to 97 percent among boys who were very high in 
novelty-seeking and very low in harm avoidance. The risk of alcoholism also 
rose, although less steeply, at the other end of the scale, among boys who were 
very high in reward dependence (warm, sentimental, sensitive to rejection and 
eager for approval) or very high in harm avoidance (shy, passive, and fearful). 
C. Robert Cloninger, Soren Sigvardsson, and Michael Bohman. Childhood 
personality predicts alcohol abuse in young adults. Alcoholism, 12:494-505 
(July-August 1988).



© President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1989 
Reprinted with permission. 


Internet Mental Health (www.mentalhealth.com) copyright © 1995-1997 by Phillip 
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