Coping Patterns of Family Caregivers with an Addict Member

Abstract

Addiction/ dependency is one of the most difficult public health and social problems. It is an addictive behavior-affecting people of all socioeconomic classes, age groups, races and genders. It may lead to many problems such as bad social adaptation, decreasing productivity at work or dismissing from job. Aim: The aim of the study was to explore coping patterns of family caregiver with an addict member. Subjects and Methods: A convenient sample was selected from the addict family members, accompanied with their family caregivers, attended the two outpatient clinics, It included 60 addict persons, ages ranged from 20 – 50 years old, besides 60 caregivers from their families, who accompanied addict members and lived with them. Thirty persons from both individuals were selected from the two settings namely; Abbassia Mental Hospital affiliated to Ministry of Health and the Psychiatric Medical Center affiliated to Ministry of Higher Education, Ain Shams University. Design: A descriptive analytical research design was used in this study. Tools: Three tools were used for data collection: (1) An interviewing questionnaire format consisted of two parts; one for the addict family member and the other for the caregiver, to assess their socio-demographic characteristics and caregiver's knowledge (2) An Attitude Rating Scale form to recognize family caregiver's attitude towards addict member; and (3) Coping Patterns Scale to assess the coping patterns of family caregivers toward addict members. Results: 48.3% of the family caregivers had adaptive behaviors, while 51.7% of them had maladaptive behaviors with addict members. Conclusion: There was a significant correlation between' family caregivers' knowledge, age, educational level, occupation and coping patterns with their addict family members, and no significant correlation between gender of the caregivers and their coping patterns with their family addict members. Recommendations: Conduct various education programs based on community-needs assessment, and utilize officially a T.V. channel as a mass media, provide evidence-based counseling services in each district, distribute freely the developed booklet related to addiction, as a model, and carry out further researches to determine barriers/ challenges that negatively affect the family caregiver's coping patterns with the addict.