This exploratory study examined the impact of family history on the recovery of alcoholic women, investigating differences between those who had been sober for at least two years and those who had at least one relapse and less than a year of abstinence. The impact of personal characteristics of the women, social support, and therapy for abuse upon recovery were also examined. / The study used a convenience sample of 157 subjects, with voluntary and anonymous participation, drawn from women alcoholics in the southeastern United States. The women completed a questionnaire using retrospective analysis and self-report data. / Multivariate analysis of covariance was used to examine the impact of individual, family, and socioeconomic factors upon recovery. Race, traumatic reactions, social support, and therapy for abuse were significant factors in differences between sober and relapsing women. Age, education, past physical abuse, and participation in Twelve Step groups, as covariates, did not significantly contribute to an understanding of the differences between the groups. / Sober and relapsing women were similar on measures of severity of addiction to alcohol, family of origin ritual, and parental chemical dependency. Although women in both groups reported a high incidence of family violence, relapsing women reported more traumatic reactions, operationalized as negative affect/cognitive schemata about self and the world; intrusiveness of thoughts, dreams, or feelings about traumatic events; and avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic event. / A combination of variables was found to accurately predict group membership, providing a means of identifying alcoholic women who are most vulnerable to relapse. Direct discriminant function analysis determined that the variables identified in the study accurately predict recovery, correctly classifying 94% of the cases. Differences between the groups on the tested variables accounted for 67% of the variance. Avoidance of stimuli associated with traumatic events, education, age, negative affect/cognitive schemata about self and the world, and counseling for abuse issues, in that order, made the greatest contributions to the analysis. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-11, Section: A, page: 3655. / Major Professor: Thomas A. Cornille. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77286 |
| Contributors | Hall, Patti K., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 229 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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