A family history of alcoholism previously has been associated with higher rates of drug and alcohol use disorders, other psychiatric disorders, and personality variables associated with psychiatric disorders and social maladjustment (Chassin et al., 1999; Christoffersen and Soothill, 2003; Grant, 2000; Merikangas et al., 1998; Preuss et al., 2002; Schuckit et al., 2000). Gender differences in the prevalence of psychiatric illness have also been shown. In particular, gender differences in some of the disorders considered here have been described previously in the NESARC data set without the consideration of parental history of alcoholism (Compton et al., 2005; Grant et al., 2004; Grant et al., 2005a; Grant et al., 2005b; Hasin et al., 2005; Petry et al., 2005). We found that paternal and maternal histories of alcoholism were each associated with higher rates of every psychiatric disorder examined, and that gender differences in the rates of these disorders in the absence of paternal or maternal alcoholism followed expected patterns.
