FAMILIAL RISKS FACING CHILDREN OF COCAINE/OPIOID ABUSERS

Little is currently known about risks confronting children, of opioid and cocaine abusers, since previous studies involving addicts and their families have generally focused on probands' parents and siblings, rather than their offspring. In studying risks faced by addicts' children, the author proposes a unique approach that combines strategies used in family-genetic studies, and those used in clinical research. Family-genetic studies indicate merely the aggregation of psychiatric disorders in families, without specifying any mechanisms of influence. It would be useful to ascertain the extent to which effects of a parent's psychopathology might be mediated by different patterns of dysfunctional family relations. The simultaneous study of major familial risks is particularly vital from the perspective of designing interventions, since the relative importance of different paths of influence must be ascertained to determine which of then might be most beneficially targeted, while intervening with families of cocaine/opioid addicts. The candidate will pursue research germane to her long-term research goals, by (1.) conducting a longitudinal study of 125 children of treatment- seeking cocaine/opioid addicted parents; (2.) examining psychiatric disorders and resilience among these addicts' children in terms of various risk/protective factors (using cross-sectional data), and (3.) examining factors associated with adolescent substance use, using data from six-month, multi-method, multi-trait prospective study, on inner-city high school students.