Stressful life events, social support, and risk for relapse in relapsed harmful alcohol users in South India: a comparative study between psychiatry and gastroenterology patients

Abstract

Background: Previous studies have identified risk factors for relapse in patients with alcohol use disorders in deaddiction or community settings. There are limited studies comparing the stressful life events, social support, and risk of relapse in relapsed harmful alcohol users between psychiatry and gastroenterology departments.

Objective: To compare the stressful life events, social support, and risk of relapse in relapsed harmful alcohol users between psychiatry and gastroenterology departments.

Methods: Comparative, cross-sectional study design was used in males with harmful alcohol use as defined by AUDIT and with at least one relapse. Presumptive Stressful Life Events Scale, Multidimensional Perceived Social Support Scale, and Alcohol Relapse Risk Scale were used.

Results: Severity of alcohol harmful use was significantly higher in psychiatry patients than gastroenterology. Increased number of gastroenterology patients reported “change in their sleeping habits” as an important factor for relapse than psychiatry, which was not significant. Only stimulus-induced vulnerability was significantly increased in psychiatry patients compared to gastroenterology. Social support significantly correlated with the alcohol relapse risk scores in the psychiatry group, while in the gastroenterology, the severity of alcohol harmful use scores significantly correlated with total alcohol relapse risk scores.

Conclusions: The individual stressors and the risk for relapse were different between the two groups. There was no difference in social support between the two groups. These findings can have implications for using these factors in relapse prevention strategies by focusing on the factors specifically found in each group. However, these findings have to be studied in a larger community sample.

Keywords:

• Stressful events
• social support
• relapse
• alcohol-related disorders

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Uttara Chari, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology, St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore, India for helping in editing and proof reading this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Also, there is no potential competing interest reported by the authors in this study.