Relationships between experiences of parental violence during childhood and women's psychiatric symptomatology

New York State Research Institute on Addictions Data were collected from 472 women between the ages of 18 and 45 drawn from five sources: outpatient alcoholism treatment, DWI education programs, a shelterforbatte red women, outpatient mental health treatment, and randomly from the community. To control for alcohol problems and help-seeking behavior, respondents were classified into three groups: women with alcohol problems and in treatment, women without alcohol problems and in treatment, and women in the random sample. Controllingfor respondents' (a) help-seeking behavior, alcohol problems, race, childhood socioeconomic status, and parental alcohol problems, (b) experiences of father-to-daughter verbal aggression and violence, and (c) level of severity of father-to-daughter abuse were found to predict adulthood psychiatric symptomatology. However, experiences of mother-to-daughter verbal aggression and violence, as well as level of severity of mother-to-daughter abuse were found unrelated to adulthood psychiatric symptomatology in the multivariate analyses. Explanations for the greater effect of father verbal abuse and violence are discussed. A.