Comparison of Impulsiveness, Ego strength, Alexithymia and Perceived Social Support in Addicts Who Continue Treatment and Those Who Quit

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 M.A. in Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

2 Professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

3 M.A. Student in General Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

4 PhD in Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Aim: Substance abuse is a maladaptive pattern of substance use through recurrent and significant adverse consequences related to the repeated use of substances appearing. Multiple variables affected on severity, duration and treatment of substance abuse disorders. In 2017, globally 271 million people were estimated to have used one or more illicit drugs. The aim of this causal-comparative study was the comparison of impulsiveness, ego strength, alexithymia and perceived social support in addicts who continued treatment and those who abandoned treatment. Methods: For this purpose, 180 participations referred to 3 drug rehabilitation center and after obtaining the consent and conveniently placed into three groups: medicinal, motivational and combined (medicinal-motivational) treatment randomly. Participations completed BIS (Barratt, 1994), Ego Strength Scale (Besharat, 2006), TAS-20 (Bagby, Parker & Taylor, 1994) and MSPSS (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet & Farley, 1998) before and after the treatments. The number of people remained at the end of treatment were 45, 39 and 43 respectively in each group. For analyze the data non-parametric U Mann-Whitney test was used. Results: The results showed significant differences on impulsiveness, ego strength, alexithymia and perceived social support between Addicts Who Continued Treatment and Those Who Abandoned Treatment. Conclusion: Considering these variable can be effective in preventing, diagnosis and treatment of addiction.

Keywords

References

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