Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy
Open Access

Abstract

Alcoholism is one of the most common psychological sequels of childhood trauma. However, some individuals develop effective coping strategies and they succeed in some areas of life, such as social relations and work. This positive aspect can be explained by ‘resilience’. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of childhood trauma and resilience on clinical feature of alcohol use disorder. The study included 66 patients who were referred to Substance Abuse Research and Treatment Center and were diagnosed with alcohol use disorder. None of the patients had comorbid axis-I psychiatric disorder. Sociodemographic data, alcohol use characteristics were obtained. Childhood trauma (childhood trauma questionnaire), resilience (resilience scale for adults), severity of alcohol use disorder (severity of alcohol dependence questionnaire and Michigan alcoholism screening test) were evaluated. The mean age of the participants was 43.2±10.3. Of all the participants, 63.6% (n=42) were married, 74.2% (n=49) had a job with regular income. The onset of problematic alcohol use was at the age of 26.3±8.8, mean duration of alcohol use was 16.9±10.3 years and mean of the longest sobriety period was 9.7±22.2 months. No correlation was found between resilience and early onset of alcohol use, problematic alcohol use and duration of sobriety. There was no correlation between childhood trauma and severity of alcohol use disorder. There was a slight negative correlation between severity of alcohol use disorder and subdomains of resilience [structured style (r=-0.278, p=0.02), perception of future (r=-0.251, p=0.04)]. These results show that interventions to increase resilience may positively affect treatment process in alcohol use disorder and reduce severity of the disorder.

Biography

Ebru Aldemir has been a Psychiatrist for eight years. She is a Lecturer and a PhD Student in Substance Addiction Programme at Ege University Institute on Drug Abuse, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Sciences. She has published more than 15 papers in reputed journals. Her research interests are addictive disorders, neurocognitive functions, motivational interviewing and brief psychotherapies.