It is estimated that about 10-20% of children and adolescents live with a parent with alcohol problems. Psychosocial consequences like difficulty concentrating or learning, and the development of maladaptive coping strategies lead to a higher risk of addiction and to further psychological disorders. The aim of the current study is to investigate the subjective consequences of pathological alcohol consumption on the learning behavior of adolescents and young adults at school.
Five qualitative interviews on the consequences of their parents' alcohol addiction were conducted with women aged between 16 and 24 years and evaluated with the Grounded Theory methodology.
Two trajectories could be identified regarding the subjective learning behavior and academic performance. The first one includes ambitious learning behavior and compensation of performance, while the second one can be described as deteriorating learning behavior and decompensation of performance.
Compensation of performance due to psychosocial and emotional burden through parental addiction seems to be an intermittent coping strategy method of adolescents and young adults.