Partner Enabling of Substance Use Disorders: Critical Review and Future Directions

Enabling behavior in a clinical sample of alcohol-dependent clients and their partners

“…An additional measure, the Behavioral Enabling Scale (Rotunda, 1996), was utilized to assess specific behaviors that partners of substance-dependent clients might potentially enact that would likely maintain or increase the drinking (or substance use) behavior of their partner. The BES is comprised of two distinct components -the enabling behaviors subscale and the enabling beliefs subscale.…”

“…In summary of the above-mentioned empirical work (see Rotunda & Doman, 2001, for a more comprehensive review), it can be said that the study of enabling has been approached using various, often divergent, methods and goals. The available evidence supports the view that at least some partners of those with substance use disorders have responded periodically in a manner consistent with popular notions of enabling.…”

“…Popular conceptions of the terms enabling and codependency, the connotations they carry, and the interchangeable uses of the terms have hampered the research on the topic. In a recent review of the rather circumscribed enabling literature (Rotunda & Doman, 2001), it was argued that a more useful approach is to omit the codependency label entirely and focus on the enabling or coping behaviors of the family members themselves. It is important to make this distinction, particularly when evaluating research on enabling, in order to separate research on enabling behaviors from the connotations that have come to be associated with the term codependency (namely, disease or personality pathology).…”

“…The present study examines the extent of specific enabling behaviors in a treatment sample of couples from the perspective of both non-alcoholic significant others and their alcohol-dependent partners, and the association between selected relationship beliefs and actual enabling responses. This exploratory investigation also initiates the validation process of the Behavioral Enabling Scale (BES; Rotunda, 1996), a clinically derived instrument that assesses enabling behaviors. The BES was designed to provide (a) a briefer format than earlier enabling measures to facilitate use by clinicians and (b) an emphasis on observable behaviors rather than inferred motives or other internal constructs.…”

Crime Continuity and Psychological Inertia: Testing the Cognitive Mediation and Additive Postulates with Male Adjudicated Delinquents

“…Even in situations where outside events appear to be maintaining a behavior, psychological inertia can still play an important mediating role. Research indicates, for instance, that an individual's acceptance of a societal label (i.e., self-labeling) is a primary determinant of the strength of the labeling effect (Bernburg and Krohn 2003), whereas the effects of enabling on alcohol consumption may be mediated, in part, by beliefs the enabled individual has about being able to avoid the negative consequences of drinking (Rotunda and Doman 2001).…”