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Marriage Counseling with Alcoholics and Their Spouses‐II The Correlation of Excessive Drinking Behavior with Family Pathology and Social Deterioration
Author(s) -
BURTON GENEVIEVE,
KAPLAN HOWARD M.
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
british journal of addiction to alcohol and other drugs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.424
H-Index - 193
eISSN - 1360-0443
pISSN - 0007-0890
DOI - 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1968.tb05262.x
Subject(s) - spouse , psychology , clinical psychology , psychiatry , medicine , sociology , anthropology
Summary This paper has described a limited study of the correlations of alcoholic drinking with family pathology and social deterioration. Study of the data obtained in follow‐up interviews with couples who have received group counseling for marital problems complicated by alcoholism in one of the partners indicates the following: (1) For those couples whose family pathology decreased, both drinking change and the final drinking pattern were found to be positively correlated with the actual number of areas of considerable disagreement at time of follow‐up. Specifically, those couples who reported no more than one or two areas of considerable disagreement at follow‐up were most likely to respond positively to questions about the alcoholic spouse's drinking at follow‐up. (2) Therefore, more important in counseling than solely aiming for a decrease in family pathology is working for a decrease to a maximum of one or two areas of considerable disagreement. (3) Findings indicate that a decrease in drinking behavior is slightly better than the final pattern of drinking behavior as an indicator of a lessening of social deterioration. (4) The hypothesis that improvement in the area of marital conflict is associated with improvement in drinking behavior has been supported. This is sufficient to conclude that counseling which focuses on the family pathology of alcoholics may be therapeutic not only with respect to the family and marriage problems, but with respect as well to the drinking problem. Thus an indirect approach to the treatment of alcoholism, through other problem areas in the alcoholic's life, may well be useful.