This synopsis of the outcome literature on marital and family treatment (MFT) drew three conclusions. First, intervening at the marital/family level with nonalcoholic family members can motivate an initial commitment to change in the alcoholic who is unwilling to seek help. Second, MFT alone, or with individual alcoholism treatment, produces…

Alcohol abuse results in a variety of problems including employment difficulties and family problems. This study integrates a family systems model of alcoholism with a family crisis model for recovery to study spouses of alcoholics and their perceptions of family stress, coping styles, and quality of marriage. Participants (N=60) were husbands or…

This document illustrates the development and presentation of a workshop given to the King County Alcohol Training Consortium in King County, Washington as a 4-hour training session. It is divided into five sections and a bibliography. The first section explains the purpose of the booklet. Section II concerns the Alcohol/Elderly Network and…

Although research on children of alcoholics indicates that they are at high risk for later problem drinking, the etiological dynamics associated with this heightened risk status are not yet understood. This study compared the alcohol-related beliefs of subjects who possessed close relatives with alcohol problems with alcohol-related beliefs of…

This article describes a practical approach to treating addictive families, designed to help them repair the damage, create more satisfying lives, and prevent long-lasting deleterious effects, commonly associated with "co-dependency" and "children of addicts." This approach is grounded in a developmental model of family recovery which was devised…

A study employed a Burkeian framework in order to determine the nature of Al-Anon's rhetoric and evaluate the success of the organization's rhetorical strategies in appealing to the co-alcoholic population that it addresses. According to Kenneth Burke, a message is persuasive if the audience perceives a commonality with the central beliefs of the…

Although alcoholism is increasingly recognized as a family disease, most research looks solely at the alcoholic, or occasionally at the alcoholic's spouse. However, there are a multitude of potential studies regarding the alcoholic family system, parent-child communication, marital communication, and sibling communication in the alcoholic home. To…

This study investigated the incidence of alcohol and/or drug abuse within families of emotionally disturbed/behaviorally disordered children, and the effectiveness of an alcohol and drug awareness curriculum for these children. Subjects were 116 children, aged 6-15, attending a residential and day treatment center. While 35.3% of the children were…

Noting that children growing up with an alcoholic parent often suffer from underdeveloped perceptual skills, unhealthy self-concepts, and low self-esteem, a study examined the impact of an alcoholic family environment on the ability of adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) to communicate interpersonally. The Communicator Style Measure (CSM) was…

Several researchers have explored the role of alcohol in domestic violence and attributions of blame. To compare the amount of blame attributed to an incident of wife abuse, alcoholic (N=52) and nonalcoholic (N=159) subjects read an account of wife abuse and distributed a percentage of the blame to the man, the woman, and the situation.…

This study assessed the effectiveness of a brief group treatment program aimed at ameliorating some of the psychological reactions commonly seen in wives of alcoholics. The goals of the 8 week treatment program were: (1) to help wives identify their counterproductive attempts to cope with the alcoholism; (2) to develop constructive coping…

Noting that little is known about how communication functions in alcoholic families, and about the effects of this alcoholic home environment on children of alcoholics, their communication patterns, and their relationships, this paper identifies strengths and weaknesses in existing literature on the alcoholic family and children of alcoholics. In…

Children of alcoholic parents often defend against family instability by adopting roles (hero, scapegoat, lost child, mascot) which bring a semblance of stability to the family. While one role may seem to dominate the character of an individual child, all four roles may be seen in the same child; at times conditions may cause an exchange of roles.…

Research and clinical support for the connections between alcohol abuse and the family milieu have generated increased interest in family treatment approaches to alcoholism. In assessing the "alcoholic family," the clinician must consider numerous aspects of family interaction which have been linked to abuse and to treatment outcomes.…

This study assessed Alcoholics Anonymous (Al-Anon) participation as a factor in stress of wives of alcoholics. Additional data focused on attitude and behavior variables. Two groups of 20 subjects each were enlisted from Al-Anon, personal contacts, treatment centers, and referrals in three urban areas in the southeastern United States. Group A…