To study the relationship between religious coping spiritual well being, and marital adjustment, among the wives of males with Alcohol Dependence Syndrome

Introduction: The impact of alcoholism on marital – family functioning and the influence of marital – family relationship on the development and the maintenance of the alcoholism are challenging problems to both the clinicians and researchers. The aim was to study the relationship between religious coping spiritual well being, and marital adjustment, among the wives of males with Alcohol Dependence Syndrome. Material And Method: Wives of alcohol dependent male patients admitted in the Department of Psychiatry, Armed Police force Hospital were included in the study after informed consent. a) Semi-Structured Proforma b) The Spiritual Well-Being Scale, C) RCOPE Scale, (D) Dyadic Adjustment Scale. were used to collect the data. Results: The results of the study show that majorities were from a rural background, low socio economic status, nuclear family and were homemakers. Spiritual well being and religious well being correlated positively with positive religious coping and inversely correlated with negative religious coping. The total score on religious coping correlated inversely with the dyadic adjustment showing that in times of stress and low marital adjustment the sample turned more to religion to help them cope. High negative correlation was seen between the dyadic adjustment of the wives and negative religious coping .The years of drinking inversely correlated with spiritual well being and the subscale of existential well being, indicating that the more number of years the patient consumed alcohol the wife had lower spiritual well being and in particular existential well being. Conclusion: Spiritual well being enhances the positive religious coping strategies of the wives of men with alcoholism in this study. When the spiritual well being is low more negative methods of religious coping are used.


INTRODUCTION
Marital and family problems may precede the alcoholism, may occur solely as a result of the alcohol consumption and the consequent behaviour changes, or may be part of a complex interaction between pre-existing weaknesses of the family or of the individuals in the family and the drinking of the family member.Alcohol families are characterized by a general atmosphere of moodiness, tension, and irritability, communication problems with the spouse 1 , incongruent perceptions between alcoholics and their wives 2 , low cohesion, expressiveness and recreational orientation 3 family violence 4 , and increased psychological distress in the children 5 .Appropriate or inappropriate coping strategies adopted by the wives to deal with the stress depend partly on the social adjustment of individual with drug or alcohol dependence and severity of addiction.The coping strategies used by them include pleading, threatening, arguing, avoiding, withdrawing sexually, being indulgent, taking greater control on responsibilities seeking outside help and taking steps towards separation. 6eligion is a form of coping that helps individuals to deal with a wide variety of difficult life situations, particularly with long term stressors.

MATERIAL AND METHOD
Forty alcohol dependent male patients, who are admitted in the Department of Psychiatry, Armed Police force Hospital ,married for at least two years and above and living with the patient, fluent in either of the following languages -English, and who gave a written informed consent.a. Spouses of patients who have co-morbid Axis I psychiatric diagnosis, Not living in the same house due to separation or divorce and who themselves are alcohol dependent were excluded.Data was collected from the wives, whose partners were admitted to both the centers for a period of 4 months, after informed consent all the individuals were rated on a) Semi-Structured Proforma b) The Spiritual Well-Being Scale 7 , C) R-COPE Scale 8 , (D) Dyadic Adjustment Scale. 9

RESULT
Shows the distribution of the wives with respect to their sociodemographic variables.Majority of the spouses i.e., 21 (52.5%) were in the age group of 31-40 years.Fourteen (35.0%) had studied upto the middle level.Majority(57.5%)were Homemakers.Detail of the Socio-demographic detail is presented in Table1.Table 2 presents the distribution of the wives with regard to the number of years of marriage.Distribution of the patients across the number of years of drinking is described in table 3. The religious well being subscale had a mean of 39.90 (SD 8.09) and a range of 20-53.The existential well being subscale had a mean of 37.12 (SD 6.76) and a range of 20-53.(Table 4) The RCOPE total had a mean of 102.27 (SD 23.57) with a range of 38.164.(Table 5)  Detail of the score is described in Table 6.Correlations between the spiritual well being (SWB) score, the religious well being subscales (SWBS), the existential well being subscales (EWBS), the RCOPE total score, the scores on the RCOPE positive domain and RCOPE negative domain and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) total scores is shown in Table 7.
Detail of the correlation between the number of years of marriage and the number of years of drinking with spiritual well being (SWB), religious coping positive (RCOPE positive) and negative (RCOPE negative) and dyadic adjustment (DAS) is illustrated in Table 8.Table 9. shows the mean scores on spiritual well being (SWB), RCOPE and dyadic adjustment (DAS) over the different age groups The mean scores on spiritual well being (SWB), RCOPE and dyadic adjustment (DAS) over the levels of education of the wives is shown in Table 10.
The mean scores on spiritual well being (SWB), RCOPE and dyadic adjustment (DAS) over the different occupations is tabulated in Table 11.Table 12.shows the mean scores on spiritual well being (SWB), RCOPE and dyadic adjustment (DAS) over the income levels.

DISCUSSION:
Spiritual well being enhances the positive religious coping strategies of the wives of men with alcoholism in this study.When the spiritual well being is low more negative methods of religious coping are used.Low marital adjustment of the wives lead to an increased need to use religious methods of coping and more often negative religious coping is used.More years of alcohol consumption of the patient lead to low spiritual and existential well being in the wife.Wives who had lower education had used religious coping more than those who were higher educated.