How Parental Alcoholism Affects Personality Disorder Development

by

Faculty Sponsor: Valerie Nazzaro

Live Poster Session: August’s Zoom Link

August Gardyne

August is a biology and classical studies double major passionate about medicine. They hope to attend medical school and become a psychiatrist after they graduate from Wesleyan University. August is involved in several groups on the Wesleyan campus, in particular the Wesleyan Student Assembly as a senator, Spectrum, the queer POC group, as a board member and student group liaison, and Disorientation, an activism group, as the financial manager and archivist.

Abstract: Personality disorders, according to the DSM-V, are a group of psychiatric disorders that describe a consistent behavior and inner experience that are extremely different from the patient’s culture with an onset in middle to late adolescence. They are associated with a pattern of massive adverse childhood experiences, and, for this research project, the angle of alcoholic parents as a major adverse childhood experience is examined. Those with one or two alcoholic parents are significantly more likely to develop a personality disorder later in life, even more so if they are male. In the future, more research must be done to determine if this applies to all personality disorders and to what extent.

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