Italian families living with relatives with alcohol or drugs problems

Abstract

Purpose: To examine the overall impact of alcohol and drug problems on a sample of Italian family members.

Sample: 113 family members affected by and concerned about the problem drinking or drug-taking of close relatives recruited from the North (N = 37), the Centre (N = 26) and the South (N = 50) of Italy.

Measurements: Family Member Impact scale (FMI), Symptom Rating Test (SRT), Coping Questionnaire (CQ) and Hopefulness–Hopelessness scale (HOPE).

Findings: There is a high level of impact on family members; the greater the impact, the higher the symptom levels; and the greater both the impact and symptoms are, the more types of coping behaviour are used. Multiple regression showed that the most important variables relating to overall symptom levels reported by family members were total coping, gender and impact. These data lend further support to the Stress-Strain-Coping-Support model (Orford et al., 2005a, b).

Notes

Notes

[1] The programme of work described in this article focuses on effects on affected family members, and not on the nature of the addiction problem for the using relative. In many countries, alcohol and drugs have different cultural and social impacts and it can therefore be hypothesized that different substances could affect family members in different ways. The approach of our group has been to examine this empirically, by seeing if there are different effects if a relative misuses alcohol versus drugs. The empirical evidence so far (e.g. Orford et al., 1998a) is that the effects on family members are similar, across alcohol, a wide range of licit and illicit drugs (Velleman et al., 1993), and indeed other related behaviours such as gambling (Orford et al., 2005b). Similar analyses were undertaken with the data reported in this present article, as described in the body of the article: Again, no significant differences were found on any measure when comparing family members of people with alcohol and with drug problems. There appears to be a common core of experiences, irrespective of the addictive problem: finding the problem unpleasant to be with; experiencing financial irregularities and difficulties; concern over the user's health or performance; concern about what the problem is doing to the whole family and the home; experiencing personal anxiety or worry; feeling helpless or despairing; and feeling low or depressed.

[2] The questionnaires were translated into Italian through a procedure of translation into Italian and retranslation into English by an Italian native speaker and an English one; a final verification was carried out by the entire research team who had not participated with the translators in the two-way translation procedure, in line with current methodological advice within cross-cultural work involving translating of measures (Pearce et al., 2003).

[3] No data are presented from the Australian sample, because that research used only qualitative data collection methods.