Codependency and Coping Strategies in the Spouses of Substance Abusers

Abstract

Introduction: Addiction affects not only the person himself but the entire family where the family members knowingly or unknowingly nurture, protect and support the addict. As it is in the human nature to help others but sometimes this behavior works as a double edged sword and will make it easier for the addict to continue the downward spiral of the addiction. One of the crucial step in creating a healthy environment for the addict and their family members is to identify these behaviors. In order to prevent these codependent behaviors the family members must learn to avoid such codependent behaviors. The presence of a substance addict in the family is an extremely difficult experience which affects the social, economic, physical and psychological condition of the entire family. Coping strategies refer to the attempts that people employ to tolerate and reduce the stressful situations or events. Objective: To study the codependency and evaluate various coping strategies employed by the spouses of substance abusers and assess the severity of addiction among the substance users. Materials And Methods: The study was conducted on spouses of (N=100) patients with 50 opioid and 50 alcohol dependence syndrome presenting to DMC&H and psychiatric evaluation was done using Spann Fischer Codependency Scale, Coping Questionnaire and Performa for Severity of Addiction. Results: All the spouses in our study were females. All the spouses showed codependency out of which 60% of the spouses showed higher codependency. Spouses used engaged, tolerant and withdrawal strategies as their coping mechanism. Though no significant difference was found between coping strategies used by the spouses of opioid and alcohol dependent individuals. It was associated significantly with socio-economic status, age of the patient, duration of substance dependence and type of substance abuse. Conclusion: Our study showed that the spouses of substance dependent individuals showed codependency and in ......