Assessment Coping Skills and Drug Craving among Addicts

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing-Faculty of Nursing, Ain Shams University-Cairo-Egypt.

Abstract

Background: Drug craving has been defined as tendency or compulsion to abuse substances. Coping skills approach provides a systematic way assessing the full range of antecedents' and consequences of abusing drug that influence an individual's craving potential and devising interventions to deal with them that are likely to reduce the probability of future relapse. Aim assess coping skills and drug craving among addicts. Study design: a descriptive exploratory design was utilized to conduct this study. Setting: this study was conducted in the Heliopolis psychiatric Hospital. Subject: convenience sample of thirty patients suffered from drug craving at the addiction outpatient clinic, Data collection tools: 1) Socio-demographic interview questionnaire to assess the socio demographic characteristics of study sample and data related to the previous history of drug abuse and relapse. 2) Drug craving questionnaire that was used to assess variable contributing to craving among drug abuse. 3) Coping Behavior Inventory (CBI) that was used to assess coping skills among drug craving patients. Results: The present study revealed that youth aged between twenty-five to thirty-five years were the most prone to multiple craving factors. Conclusion: this study concluded that there was high statistically significant positive correlations between the drug craving and coping skills. Recommendations: A hotline must be available to solve immediate problems of craving patient. Expand primary health care services in community services frequently used by patients with drug craving.

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