Coping Strategies and Personality Profile Characteristics of People Whose Parents Were Alcohol Addicts

Abstract

The relevance of this research is due to the wide prevalence of addictive behavior and the insufficient knowledge of the coping strategies of patients and their families. The purpose of this research was to investigate the resource factors and coping strategies of adults with alcohol-addicted parents and to make recommendations for psychological counseling for these people. The sample consisted of 52 subjects—who were participants in a twelve-step rehabilitation program for adult people whose parents had alcohol addictions—and 50 controls. We used guilt questionnaires (“The Guilt Inventory Questionnaire”, “The Interpersonal Guilt Questionnaire”), quantitative methods for evaluating the coping strategies used by participants (“coping strategies” (Lazarus, Folkman)), and a phenomenological analysis of the interviews with the participants. The results showed that adults with alcohol-addicted parents felt guilty in situations when they took care of somebody because their own parents did not model (and teach them) caretaking behavior. People whose parents were alcohol addicts tend to avoid accepting responsibility for their lives. The resource factors of people with alcohol-addicted parents included keeping a diary, participation in a rehabilitation program, and confidential communication with other people.

The Lived Experience of a Newly Diagnosed Older Person With HIV in Ukraine

“…The Lazarus and Folkman model was chosen as the theoretical framework because it is a well-defined model that is widely cited and used in a wide variety of settings (Folkman, 2010), including among patients with HIV (Atkinson et al, 2008;Graham, 2015;Remien et al, 2006). While it has not been used in the Ukrainian context, it has been used in studies of coping in other populations in the wider Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) region, including Russia (Dolgova & Rokitskaya, 2020;Lutsenko, 2020). This model was particularly appealing because of its emphasis on coping as a nonlinear process, which allowed us to explore HIV diagnosis as a participant-defined stressor and examine patient accounts of coping mechanisms and feelings toward diagnosis over time.…”