Faculty Sponsor: Valerie Nazzaro
Live Poster Session: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/97788127896
Brooke Goodwin
Brooke is majoring in Biology and Neuroscience and Behavior with a minor in Chemistry. She is a junior at Wesleyan University from San Diego, California.
Abstract: Social phobia impacts 7.1% of the adult U.S. population and can cause severe impairments to everyday life (National Institute of Mental Health 2003). There is strong established research on social phobia and alcohol abuse as comorbidities (Abrams et al., 2001) and on the impacts of parental alcohol abuse on the likelihood of mental disorders in their children (Raitasalo et al., 2018 & Kosty et al., 2019). However, less is known about the intergenerational effect of parental alcohol abuse on social phobia in their children. This analysis investigates the role of parental alcohol abuse on the presence and severity of social phobia. In this study of the NESARC codebook, there were significant differences between the groups of those with both parents, a singular parent, or neither parent with a history of alcohol abuse. These results showed a decrease in both presence and severity when fewer parents had a history of alcohol abuse. It was also determined that females are at a greater risk overall of developing social phobia at a greater severity than males; however, this did not change the overall trend. Understanding this association can allow for the identification of a group at risk for developing social phobia so that early intervention can be done to potentially reduce the presence and severity of the disorder.
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