In this 45-year prospective longitudinal study, parental history of psychiatric hospitalisation with an alcohol-related diagnosis (AUD) was associated with an increased risk of AUD in the offspring, independent of gender, parental social status, and parental psychiatric hospitalisation with other diagnoses. These effects appeared to be stronger in female than in male offspring. The risk of offspring AUD was also increased by a diagnosis of any other psychiatric disorder in the parents. The findings suggest that the familial transmission of alcoholism may be closely related to the transmission of psychiatric illness in general and may influence females to a larger degree than males.
