Effect of Substance Abuse and Family Violence on the Family

Solution Preview

Discuss substance abuse (addiction) and family violence (abuse) and how they can affect families. How can the effects of both compare to the potential effects of other issues.

I'm not 100% sure what "compare to the potential effects of other issues." I assume you mean things like divorce, abandonment or mental illness.

Children often act like "spouses" to the addicted parent; it is a common reversal of roles. Riley (1992) cited six specific affects that substance abuse has on families:
Negative feedback: this means that family communication is really reduced to complaints and arguments. Lacks, deficiencies and deficits are everywhere and usually in every category here, and they get verbalized quite a bit.

Parental issues: Inconsistency of rules and enforcement is a major problem. Since children crave boundaries that are clear and parameters that are enforced regularly, acting out in order to provoke boundary setting is common.

Denial is well known. This is usually not a deliberate resistance response. It often comes from a lack of memory, the feeling of euphoria when using or a rationalization that makes it all go away. Remember that thoughts and cognition in general is distorted by many things, including the drug itself, rationalizations for using and the desire to continue using regardless of objective consequences.

As the problems at home can also contain volatility and potential for abuse, children and spouses may suppress anger and let it out at inopportune times. Drugs themselves might become a means of dealing with repressed anger and the stress it causes.

Drugs are often a form of self-medication. They become a coping mechanism of their own (Reilly, 1992). Often, drug use is predicted by previous drug use in the family home. It is often available and its positive effects are seen. The negative effects can be rationalized away.

When one person in a household is addicted and another is not, a form of co-dependency might develop. It could be a spouse, sibling or older child. Co-dependency is not healthy, and is typified by these marks like these:

They believe that others in their lives cannot take care of themselves. Hence, they become controlling people, not so much out of vice, but out of personal experience. Depression and anxiety can result from a perceived lack of control. Borderline Personality Disorder derives from this in that the fear of abandonment and inconsistent parenting lead to controlling behaviors. They normally see themselves as worthless and so ...