Introduction : Alcohol being a psychoactive substance, its increasing trend of consumption in India poses threat to society in various forms including psychological ill-effects to the members of the family, Adolescent children who grew up in a chaotic environment are affected and are prone to get behavioral problems. Parental alcoholism can have a significant role in shaping them. Self-esteem is a feeling of one’s own worth which could well be influenced by parental behavior. Hence this study was conducted with an objective to study the self-esteem among children of alcoholic and non-alcoholic parents among college-going students in a selected college in Dharmapuri district, Tamilnadu.
Methodology: An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted among the college students of Periyar University-affiliated Arts and Science College, Pappireddipatti, Dharmapuri district students were given a self-administered semi-structured questionnaire, (Part I- Socio-demographic details, Part II- Modified Children of Alcoholic Screening Test-CAST, Part III- Rosenberg Self Esteem scale-RSES). They were grouped based on the Modified CAST tool into Children Of Alcoholic (COA) and Children Of Non-Alcoholic (nCOA), 120 participants' responses from each group were taken up by simple random sampling and analyzed using SPSS version16.
Results: The mean age of the study participants was 19.7 + 1.33 years. There was no difference in demographic characteristics between the 2 groups. Mean Self-esteem scores are lower for the children of alcoholic parents (13.2) when compared to the children of non-alcoholic parents (17.5) and there was a statistically significant difference in the mean RSES scores between the 2 groups by independent ‘t’ test with p=value<0.05. There was a statistically significant association between the Alcoholic status of parents(COA and nCOA) and the self-esteem of their children(Low and Normal) by chi-square test with a p-value <0.05.
Conclusion: The majority of the children of alcoholic parents had lower self-esteem than their counterparts. Alcohol, being a physical and behavioral teratogen can easily invade into an adolescent’s behavioral pattern if not intervened timely. Self- esteem, as an important psychological drive during adolescence, has to be maintained high to make a productive future generation.