[The "addiction trends" seen among the wives of alcoholics. Report 2].

Abstract

It has been known that wives of alcoholics tend to show an unhealthy relation with their husbands. The test called ASTWA (Addictions Screening Test for Wives of Alcoholics), which we developed earlier and reported in the previous paper in detail, might be useful for both wives and therapists for helpful suggestions. In this report, the present authors try to evaluate the ASTWA scores obtained from the wives, which consist of "a total score," "caring trends", "dominating trends," "obsessive traits," and "trends toward lowering of self-esteem," making clear each of the critical points between normal and abnormal sifting trends with the help of a normal control study. The results are demonstrated graphically as in the YG Test. In this way, the reliability, the validity, and the usefulness of ASTWA were confirmed in the process of this study. A prospective study concerning the prognosis of alcoholism of their husbands in relation to the results of ASTWA was carried out. In the non-intervened group, wives of the abstinence group tended to show a lower score than in those of the slipped group in terms of the total score, the dominating trends, the obsessive traits, and the trends toward lowering of self-esteem. In the group in which three months of initial therapy for wives have been completed, a significant parallel correlation was found between the ASTWA results and the prognosis of abstinence of their husbands. These results suggest that the total score, the caring trends, dominating trends, and the involved traits would indicate a degree of healthiness or unhealthiness in the marital relationship, particularly in terms of a circular cause and effect relation in developing alcoholism, and also would be a prospective indicator of the prognosis of alcoholism of their husbands.