Document Type : Research Article
Authors
1 PhD. student in psychology, Birjand Branch, Islamic Azad University, Birjand, Iran.
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Birjand branch, Islamic Azad University, Birjand, Iran.
Abstract
Introduction
The present study was conducted with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of community therapy (TC) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) in the defense mechanisms of people addicted to methamphetamine. Addiction is a disease that has many biological, psychological, and social consequences, and its treatment programs also have various consequences. Most treatment programs aim to reduce or stop taking medication. However, drug dependent patients are also dealing with many other problems, many of which may date back to before they started using drugs. These problems may even be one of the important reasons for starting to use drugs. In this way, treatment programs should not only aim to reduce and stop drug use but should also consider relevant a
Method
The current study was applied in terms of purpose and in a semi-experimental manner with a pre-test-post-test design with two experimental groups and one control group along with a follow-up period. The statistical population studied included all people addicted to methamphetamine with consumption at least twice a month and at most three times a week for 2 years in 2 maintenance centers of the community center for the treatment of the secret of peace and NA sessions of Shahid Ostadian welfare in the city of Shiraz in 6 months. They were first treated in 2021. According to Cohen's table, 15 people were considered for each group and 45 people in total. The samplingling method was purposeful based on the entry and exit criteria, and the assignment in the groups was done randomly in three groups of 15 people, experiment 1 (TC treatment), experiment 2 (NA treatment) and the control group. The tool used in this research is the defense mechanism questionnaire of Andrews et al. (1993) and the TC treatment protocol and the NA treatment protocol were conducted in two 90-minute sessions in the morning and evening shifts during 12 sessions every 4 days for 3 months. In all three groups, these questionnaires were first distributed, and then educational interventions were held for the test groups. Finally, after two months, a post-test was taken from all three groups. The data was analyzed by spss-22 and statistical tests of covariance were the final analysis.
Results
The results showed that there is a significant difference between the mean of only the subscales of inhibitory control and selective attention, physicalizing, isolation, exaltation and suppression, irritability in the experimental (under NA) and control groups. The results of the Bonferroni test show that there is a significant difference between TC and NA in the average subscales of memory, planning and social cognition, mechanisms of all-purpose ability, autistic fantasy and suppression, irritability, extroversion, and openness. and TC has a higher effectiveness.
Discussion
Therefore, according to the results, TC and NA treatment can be used in the use of incompatible defense mechanisms. Being in a family with a member suffering from a mental disorder often imposes a major objective and mental pressure on other family members. The amount of this pressure depends on the relationships between the members such as husband and wife and children or parents, age and gender, the quality of their relationship with the patient before the illness, the nature of the patient's problems, the coping strategies used. Since defense mechanisms change our understanding of ourselves, immature defense mechanisms become an obstacle to people's understanding of reality and deprive them of the possibility of rational and effective defense. They reduce a person's capacity for insight and self-discovery. In addition, people with underdeveloped defensive styles are more willing to use ineffective solutions to solve their conflicts, which causes them to remain in difficult relationships and can even intensify the severity of the damage. Perhaps one of the reasons for the excessive use of defense mechanisms by the families of people suffering from addiction is the failure to face the same problems in the family.
Keywords
- defense mechanisms
- Narcotics Anonymous (NA)
- people addicted to methamphetamine
- therapeutic community (TC)
Main Subjects
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