Birth Order and Psychopathology

• Main Authors: Ajay Risal, Hema Tharoor
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications 2012-01-01
• Series: Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care
• Subjects: Birth order; depression; psychopathology
• Online Access: http://www.jfmpc.com/article.asp?issn=2249-4863;year=2012;volume=1;issue=2;spage=137;epage=140;aulast=Risal

Context: Ordinal position the child holds within the sibling ranking of a family is related to intellectual functioning, personality, behavior, and development of psychopathology. Aim: To study the association between birth order and development of psychopathology in patients attending psychiatry services in a teaching hospital. Settings and Design: Hospital-based cross-sectional study. Materials and Methods: Retrospective file review of three groups of patients was carried out. Patient-related variables like age of onset, birth order, family type, and family history of mental illness were compared with psychiatry diagnosis (ICD-10) generated. Statistical Analysis: SPSS 13; descriptive statistics and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used. Results: Mean age of onset of mental illness among the adult general psychiatry patients (group I, n = 527) was found to be 33.01 ± 15.073, while it was 11.68 ± 4.764 among the child cases (group II, n = 47) and 26.74 ± 7.529 among substance abuse cases (group III, n = 110). Among group I patients, commonest diagnosis was depression followed by anxiety and somatoform disorders irrespective of birth order. Dissociative disorders were most prevalent in the first born child (36.7%) among group II patients. Among group III patients, alcohol dependence was maximum diagnosis in all birth orders. Conclusions: Depression and alcohol dependence was the commonest diagnosis in adult group irrespective of birth order.