The study of personal and psychological characteristics of young men with drug addiction
Abstract
The article is devoted to the study of self-appraisal, anxiety and coping strategies in young men with drug addiction. The sample is consisted of 29 young men aged from 18 to 30 years with drug addiction, located in the rehabilitation center “Bereg Nadezhdy” (“The Coast of Hope”) in Novosibirsk. The control group includes 36 male students of Novosibirsk State University aged from 18 to 22 years without drug addiction. The methods “Personal Differential” (2002) (as adapted in The St. Petersburg Bekhterev Psychoneurological Research Institute), “Integrative anxiety test (ITT)” (adapted by A.P. Bizyuk, L.I. Wasserman, BV Iovlev, 2001) and Ways of Coping Questionnaire by R. Lazarus and S. Folkman (1988) were used for the psychodiagnostic study. According to the results obtained, the self-appraisal of young men with drug addiction is quite unstable and changes sharply, depending on their condition, location and treatment attitude. At the time of abstinence withdrawal, self-appraisal of drug addicts is characterized by the idealized image of themselves, illusiveness, inability to critical evaluation of their characteristics and the denial of the existence of psychological problems. The level of situational anxiety and personal anxiety revealed in this group indicates the presence of maladjustment both in inter- or intraindividual relations, and also the presence of disharmony with the environment as a whole. In the structure of anxiety, young men with drug addiction express emotional discomfort, the feeling of incomprehensible threat and general concern of the future against the background of increased emotional sensitivity. The methods of coping behavior in the group of drug addicts are accompanied by a feeling of guilt and dissatisfaction with themselves in the group, by the use of primitive, infantile defense mechanisms of coping with stress such as distancing, avoidance, confrontive coping and ignoring the effective solution of the problem in the form of its positive reappraisal.
Key words: system approach, biopsychosocial model, drug addiction, personal and psychological characteristics, self-appraisal, anxiety, uneasiness, coping strategies.
