Violence and alcoholism in the family: how are the children affected?

We made an evaluation of how children and adolescents are affected if they live in a family environment where violence associated with alcoholism is a feature. Interviews with 20 families and the use of psychological tests on their children were performed in this study. The study has demonstrated the existence of psychopathological disturbances in those families' children, whose immaturity and insecurity were expressed by aggressive behaviour or by depressive manifestations. It also became evident that there was a transgenerational alcoholism-violence frequency.