Psychiatric morbidity and marital satisfaction among spouses of men with alcohol dependence

Abstract

Background:Alcohol dependence has adverse health and social consequences; Alcohol related problems primarily occur within the family context and maximum impact is felt on spouses, given the intimate nature of their relationship. Spouses play an important role in treatment programs related to alcohol. There is thus a need to study psychiatric morbidity and marital satisfaction in spouses of alcohol dependent patients in order to understand and address such issues.Aims:The aim of this study was to assess the pattern of psychiatric morbidity, marital satisfaction in spouses of men with alcohol dependence syndrome and explore the association.Materials and Methods:For psychiatric morbidity, 60 spouses of men with alcohol dependence syndrome were evaluated. Marital satisfaction was assessed using the marital satisfaction scale. Severity of alcohol dependence in the husbands and consequences of drinking was assessed using short alcohol dependence data and drinkers inventory of consequences respectively.Results:More than half of the spouses (65%) had a psychiatric disorder. Primarily mood and anxiety disorder were present. Major depressive disorder was present in 43%. Psychiatric morbidity, marital dissatisfaction in spouses and higher adverse consequences alcohol dependence in their husbands, were found to be significantly correlated with each other and their association was robust particularly when problems in the physical, interpersonal and intrapersonal domains were high.Conclusion:Psychological distress and psychiatric morbidity in spouses of alcohol dependent men is high, with marital satisfaction being low. Addressing these issues will be beneficial as spouses are known to play an important role in the treatment of alcohol dependence syndrome.

Psychiatric morbidity and marital satisfaction: an empirical study on spouse of alcohol dependent cases in Barak valley, North-East India

“…4 Kishor et al from Karnataka, India reported higher prevalence of alcohol dependence (70%) in cases who were unskilled labours. 6 Most of the alcohol dependence cases in present study were from lower middle socioeconomic status (44.92%) followed by lower class (27.53%). Various studies across India have reported a similar result of higher dependence in cases belonging to lower socioeconomic status.…”

“…Kishor et al from Karnataka, India reported that a mean duration of alcohol dependence among the cases was 4 years (±3.4) which is almost similar to present study while Tyagi et al from Rajasthan, India found the mean duration to be 9.60±2.79 years which is higher than present results. 6,7 On applying SADD we observed that majority of the cases had severe level of alcohol dependence (47.82%) followed by moderate level of dependence (44.92%). Almost similar results were reported by Kishor et al in their study.…”

“…Almost similar results were reported by Kishor et al in their study. 6 60.86% of the spouse of the alcohol dependent cases had a psychiatric morbidity as per ICD-10 diagnostic criteria with majority of them suffering from depressive disorder F32 (30.43%) followed by persistent mood disorder F34 (17.39%). While there are large number of studies regarding the presence of psychiatric morbidities in the alcohol abusers a very few studies have tried to explore the co-morbid psychiatric illness in the spouses of the alcoholics especially in India.…”

“…Various studies across India have reported a similar result of higher dependence in cases belonging to lower socioeconomic status. [4][5][6] Most of the cases in this study were from rural background (69.56%) and belonged to joint family (69.56%). This might be explained by the fact that most of the families in Barak valley are agriculture based rural population.…”

“…(97%) which is almost similar to our results. 6 Tyagi et al from Rajasthan, India reported the mean age of the spouse of the alcohol dependent cases to be 30.67±8.12 years while Sedian et al from Nepal reported the majority of the spouse of the alcoholic cases to be in the age group of 30-39 years (34.78%) similar to present findings 7,8 Both these studies also found that most of the wives were primary educate and housewives/unskilled labours by occupation which is in accordance to present results. 7,8 We found that the mean duration of alcohol dependence among the cases to be 4.855±2.97 with majority of the cases having the duration in the range of 1-9 years (86.95%).…”