Posted on June 5, 2009

There is a saying that you are a product of your environment. Now, new research demonstrates how a person’s surroundings when growing up can impact their mental health later in life.

Science Daily recently released a report that showed those individuals with parents who were violent to each other are more likely to have mental health problems later on. The exposure to violence experienced by the child acts as a form of maltreatment with negative consequences on the development of the child.

Authors of this study examined 3,023 adults in Paris in 2005 by conducting at-home face to face interviews. They measured current depression and lifetime suicide attempts, intimate partner violence, violence against children and alcohol dependence.

Researchers also asked questions that pertained to childhood adversities, including parental separation, divorce, parental death or imprisonment, alcoholism, and physical and/or sexual abuse. Study participants were also interviewed about social level stressors, such as poor parental health, housing problems, prolonged parental unemployment and financial troubles.

Within this group, 16 percent reported that they had witnessed interparental violence before the age of 18. The occurrences were far more likely in cases where parents had been alcoholics.

Those who had this exposure were 1.4 times more likely to have depression, three times more likely to be involved in conjugal violence, five times more likely to mistreat their own children and 1.75 times more likely to become dependent upon alcohol.

The authors concluded in the Science Daily piece: “Intensification of prevention of and screening for domestic violence including interparental violence is a public health issue for the well-being of future generations.”