PSYCHO-SOCIAL causes of abnormal behavior

INADEQUADE/ PATHOGENIC FAMILY STRUCTURE

None of us live utterly alone. Family is the primary unit where individuals find their self identity
and desire to live. The members of a family have a common habitat, share same roof and
constitute a single house hold. They interact and communicate with each other in the
performance of roles, as spouse, mother and father, son, daughter, etc. The family maintains a
common culture, but may operationalize it differently. A rather loose definition of family
connotes a group of individuals who live together during important phase of their lifetime and
are bound to each other by biological or social or psychological relationship.

Emergent Role of Families in Mental Disorder

Family is the main socializing agent for the child and is important in all aspects of a human
development. From family, an individual gets emotional, financial, mental support and is able to
cope with his/her problems with the help of the members of the family. Scientific observations
on mental disorders and mental patients have indicated that family contributes significantly to
the development of mental disorders. The importance of the role of the family as a causative
factor in the development of mental disorders is getting more and more established, particularly
over the past decade. Clinical work and research on families, theories of family structure and
dynamics had their beginning since 1940s with the work by Social scientist (Meyer and
Sullivan). It is indicated that family has a crucial role in the development of mental disorders.
Mental disorders develop as a result of family pathology or faulty communication or
interpersonal relationship. Although the individual is affected, yet the whole family is sick

In following areas family plays crucial role in the development of psychopathology:

Inadequate Family Structure: Current research on families has revealed that the general family
environment as well as the child relationships may foster maladaptive behavior on the part of the
child with one or both parents. There is no model of the ideal family. However a few types of
families that clearly have a detrimental influence on the child developments are:

(a) The Inadequate Family – This type of the family is characterized by inability to cope with
the ordinary problems of the daily living. It lacks the resources, physical and psychological for
meeting demands. Incompetence of such families can’t give its children the feeling of safety and
security or adequately guide them in the development of essential competencies. Children
brought up in a very poor environment where they are deprived of the basic needs may develop
maladaptive behaviors in life.

(b) The Disturbed Family or Home: Disturbed family may have certain characteristics like (1)
the presence of parents who are fighting to maintain their own equilibrium and who are unable to
give the child the needed love and guidance (2) Exposure of the child to emotional and faulty
parental models and (3) the inclusion of the child in the emotional conflicts of the parents.
Disturbed homes have been associated with high incidence of psychological disturbances among
children. It represents a threat to his/her “base of operation” and the only security he knows.

(c) The Antisocial Family: Here the family espouses values not accepted by the wider
community. The parents are overtly or covertly engaged in behavior that violates the standards
and interests of the society at large. They provide undesirable models to the child. Children in
such families may be encouraged in dishonesty, deceit and other undesirable behaviour patterns
and imitate the behavior and attitudes of their parents. Their social interactions are shallow and
may lead to the development of anti social personality of the child.

(d) The Disrupted Family- Disrupted families are incomplete, whether as a result of death,
divorce, separation or some other condition. A number of studies have shown traumatic effects
of divorce on a child. Feelings of insecurity and rejection may be aggravated by conflicting
loyalties. Delinquency and other maladaptive behaviors are much higher among children and
adolescents coming from disrupted homes.

(e) The Discordant Family: Here one or both the parents are not getting satisfaction and may
express feelings of frustration and disillusionment in hostile ways such as nagging, fighting and
doing things purposely to annoy the other person. Serious discordant relationships are likely to
be frustrating, hurtful and generally pathogenic in their effects on both the adult and the children.

(f) Psychopathology in the family: if any one member of the family is suffering from any sort of
mental illness or disorder it may have a very detrimental effect on the mental health of the child
that is brought up in that environment.

Family Factors may contribute to The Etiology of Various Psychiatric Disorders/ Pathogenic
Behaviors Psychoanalysis has suggested that childhood deprivation of maternal affection
through separation or loss predisposes to depressive disorders in adult life. Increased affective
morbidity in adult life whereas children separated from their parents as a result of marital
problems or divorces do subsequently have increased rates of depression. Patients with severe
depressive disorders and mild depressive disorders remember their parents have been less caring.
Loss of parents early in life are associated not with overt mood disorders but with immaturity,
hostile dependency, manipulativeness, impulsiveness and low threshold for alcohol and drug
abuse in adulthood without directly affecting the life time risk of depression. These
characteristics may precipitate life events which may trigger depression earlier in life and result
in more frequent episodes of depression. Similarly, 40% of depressed patients who have
personality disorder experience more stress, an earlier onset of depression and poorer recovery
than those without such disorders. Family dysfunction is one among many causal factors on the
generation of drugs misused and related social and behavior disorder among adolescent and
young adults. Parental substance use tends to put children and adolescent in such families of a
heightened risk of a variety of stressful life event, behavioral and emotional difficulties, and
weakened ties drug used in adolescence. Violence, sexual abuse and victimization appear to be a
strong risk factor for life time mental health problem in the family.

It has been found that parents who have various forms of Psychopathology, including schizophrenia,
depression, antisocial personality disorder, and alcoholism, tend to have children who are at heightened
risk for a wide range of developmental difficulties. A no. of studies on Children of alcoholics have
shown elevated rates of truancy and substance abuse and a greater likelihood of dropping out of school,
as well as higher levels of anxiety and depression and lower levels of self-esteem.