Examination of childhood trauma and self-esteem of individuals who applied to the probation office due to substance use

Abstract

Substance use is increasing worldwide, and this creates serious social, economic and psychological problems. This study aims to examine the sociodemographic, childhood trauma (CT), self-esteem level and clinical data of individuals diagnosed with substance use disorder (SUD) who applied to the Probation Unit and the control group and it also aims to compare these data. In this prospective cohort study, 73 individuals diagnosed with SUD, and a control group consisting of 73 simple randomly selected healthy individuals. It was determined that the participants in the SUD group had extremely significantly lower self-esteem and had a high level of CT exposure compared to the control group. When all the cases were examined in the study, it was observed that as the level of self-esteem decreased, the rate of exposure of CT was significantly higher. Participants with SUD were more exposed to emotional abuse, physical abuse, physical neglect, and physical abuse compared to control group. It was determined that those with substance use had a high rate of childhood trauma and low self-esteem. In effective fight against substance abuse, it was thought that sociocultural programs should be implemented, and accessibility of these programs should be expanded in order to increase individuals’ self-esteem levels.

Keywords:

• Substance abuse
• probation
• cannabis
• childhood trauma
• self-esteem

Acknowledgement

The authors present thanks to Ayşe Vlok for her assistance in proofreading of language.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.