Toddlers at Risk Department

My father, Robert Zucker, is a clinical psychologist who has been studying alcoholism for more than 35 years. Recently, a team from the Addiction Research Center, which my father heads, out of the Psychiatry Department at the University of Michigan, released a paper suggesting that early childhood sleep problems may be a marker for early onset of alcohol, tobacco, and drug use in a child's teen years. (No jokes, please.)

The paper, published in the April issue of of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, has drawn attention from the CNN, ABC, and CBS TV and radio networks; the AP, Reuters, and HealthDay newswires; and Michigan media ranging from Fox 2 Detroit to the Lansing State Journal and Ann Arbor News.

To read the university's press release on the study, go here.

I have an e-mail containing links to 13 stories all published on April 15th, from Reuters to the Times of London to a Web site in Kazakhstan. If anyone is interested, they can e-mail me and I'd be happy to pass those links along.

I should point out that is not "my dad's" study. He has his own research project, a longitudinal study following alcoholics and their children (and their children's children and so on) that started in the 1960s. But in any case, it's a big deal. So congratulations, Dad!