Inter-generational Conflict and Psychiatric Symptoms

Secondary school pupils and their parents were investigated using the scaled version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ–28) and by a questionnaire designed to study attitudes involved in inter-generational conflict in psychiatric patients. Parent-pupil and interparental conflict in answers to the attitude questionnaires were taken as measures of inter-generational and intra-generational conflicts respectively. The former significantly exceeded the latter. Parent-student conflict was higher when the students involved were females, Kuwaiti, or had less educated fathers. The tendency of the number of reported GHQ symptoms to be higher in members of families with higher inter-generational conflict did not reach statistical significance. There is an apparent discrepancy between this finding and the prominence of inter-generational conflict in clinical material.