Surveys have shown that alcohol misuse is the biggest substance misuse problem in the world today, affecting millions of people. With the disease being part of a family, all members of the family experience the distress of parental alcohol misuse. While the challenges that these families have to face are many, they seem to have the ability to “bounce back”, in other words, have resilience. There has been limited research to date on family relations and alcohol misuse in South Africa, especially in terms of the parental member as the alcohol misuser. The proposed research aimed to explore and describe the factors that facilitate adjustment and adaptation in families where a member misuses alcohol. The Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment and Adaptation was used to analyze the factors that enable a family to adapt to the alcohol misuse, as outlined in the broader study at the University of Stellenbosch. An exploratory descriptive research design was employed in the proposed study. For the purposes of this study, the researcher combined qualitative and quantitative research methods in order to use their complementary strengths to enrich the data obtained from the proposed study. Sixty three families were surveyed using a biographical questionnaire and seven pencil-and-paper questionnaires. These families were accessed via drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities throughout South Africa. The data from the biographical questionnaire was analyzed using descriptive statistics, while the qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis. The quantitative data was analyzed using correlation and regression analysis. The findings of the proposed research allow for better management of the alcohol misuser’s condition through the understanding of what resiliency areas the family may improve upon. Furthermore, the study can be used as a stepping stone for future research of resilience in families living with a parental member who misuses alcohol, and ultimately contributes to the broader context of family resilience research in South Africa. Key words: alcohol misuse, alcohol abuse, alcohol dependence, family, resilience, adjustment, adaptability.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9909 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Fisher, Ruth |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Health Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MA |
| Format | vii, 124 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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