Parents’ Divorce Makes Kids Turn to Drugs & Alcohol

Children of divorced parents more often resort to alcohol, get poor grades in schools, have eating disorders and suffer from drug abuse. This conclusion was made by the British sociologists.

About 60% of the children, whose parents have gone through a divorce, felt the negative consequences of this step. More than 25% of adolescents and young people, who took part in the sociological survey, complained that they were involved in parental disputes that had a negative impact on their psyche. Every eighth respondent used drugs or sought the help of alcohol, and almost a third began to eat in much larger or much smaller quantities than before, which led to the development of eating disorders.

In general, sociologists have traced the impact of parental divorce on the health of 500 young people aged 14 to 22 years. This is another study that shows what a heavy blow the father and mother’s divorce is to the physical and mental health of a child. Meanwhile, according to statistics, approximately 50-60% of young couples in Russia subsequently experience a divorce.

30% of the respondents stated that one of the parents tried to get them on his/her side in a dispute with the other parent. Most of the children showed a sharp decline in academic performance after the divorce of the parents, 12% began to regularly miss school, 11% had serious problems in the relationship with the teachers. It should be noted that the United Kingdom, according to the statistics of the European Union, is a country which is home to the largest number of children with single parents in all of Western Europe.