The Correlate of Personality Traits and Parenting Styles with Relapse in Alcohol amongst Treated Alcoholic Patients

Abstract

Background: Alcohol is gateway for other substance use and probably abuse. The alarming rate of relapse in alcohol is the basis for this present study. Aim: The study was designed to evaluate the correlations between personality traits and parenting styles with relapse among alcohol abusers. Setting: The study was carried out at the Neuro-Psychiatric clinic Emene, Enugu State University Teaching Hospital, Enugu, Nigeria. Method: This was a cross-sectional and descriptive study of 50 relapse alcohol abusers/addicts comprised of 30 males and 20 females with the mean age of 22.48 and standard deviation of 4.05 on admission at clinic, using: The Big Five Inventory, Parental Care Scale and Mac-Andrew Alcoholism Scale (MAS). Survey design was used and correlational analysis was employed as the appropriate statistics for data analysis. Results: The result of the finding shows that there was no correlation between openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness personality traits and relapse in alcohol among psychiatric patients. On the contrary, the result of this study reveals that there is significant correlation between neuroticism and relapse in alcohol among participants. Besides, the findings of this study indicate that there is no significant correlation between authoritarian parenting and authoritative parenting styles and relapse in alcohol amongst participants; whereas, the result of this study shows that there is significant correlation between permissive parenting styles and relapse in alcohol amongst participants. Conclusion: It is obvious from the recent experience which prompted this study, that one of the most critical factors destroying youths today is substance abuse which alcohol is one of them. Relapse in alcohol can be prevented if psychological intervention is provided to strengthen the neurotic individuals and as well as if authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles are adopted early enough in the formation of children.