In this study, an effort has been made to investigate the role of family environment in the development of drug addiction, sexually transmitted diseases matched with normal subjects on age, education and socioeconomic status. Each group was comprised of 10 males and 10 females. The sample of drug addicts were taken from I.G.M.C. Shimla, India and the sexually transmitted diseased (STD) patients were taken from Rippon Hospital, Shimla, India. The sampling technique was purposive sampling. The scores on neuroticism and stress were compared through ANOVA of the order of 3x2. The findings are: the neuroticism and stress of STD patients and drug addicts one significantly higher than normals. On the factors of family environment, the results indicate that the drug addicts and STD patients’ families significantly had lesser cohesion, expressiveness, independence, achievement orientation, intellectual-cultural orientation, moral-religious emphasis and organization and more importantly lesser control and more conflict. For gender, the findings are: that females’ families across all samples are significantly higher on intellectual-cultural-orientation, active-recreational-orientation, moral-religious emphasis, organization and control. The hallmark of present findings suggest that it seems, after the onset of disease, the level of stress and neuroticism rises than the other way round.
Journal of Indian Health Psychology Vol. 3, No. 1, September, 2008