Abstract

SERRANO PATTEN, Ana Caridad; RODRIGUEZ CARDENAS, Nadia  and  LOURO BERNAL, Isabel. The family facing up to drug dependency in adolescents. Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 2011, vol.37, n.2, pp. 0-0. ISSN 1561-3127.

Objective To describe the various ways in which the family faces up to drug dependency in teenagers seen at the Havana's Center for Treatment of Drug Dependency in Adolescents. Methods Cross-sectional descriptive research study conducted in this institution in 2009, a place where a comprehensive multidisciplinary service is offered to treat drug dependency and its complications in adolescents and young people. The exploration of the various ways in which the family faced up to this problem was based on in-depth interviews. The analytical unit was the group of relatives living with the drug-dependent patients. The primary source of information was the chosen "family key informant". The wide range of data was processed by the Taylor-Bogdan´s algorithm. Results Several analysis categories, concepts and proposals emerged, which helped to make a description of the ways the family faced up to drug dependency before the confirmation of the disease up to the moment of the study. It could be observed that the mother prevailed as the regulator of the family relationships with the sick son/daughter at different times of his/her life; there were some family behaviours in favour of justifying and covering up actions associated to drug consumption by adolescents, the family perception of loss of control over them as well as the denial of family responsibility over the patient's disease and treatment. Conclusions This research identified a sort of evasive way of family facing up to drug dependency as well as predominant group behaviour before the situations linked to the history of substance consumption by adolescents in the process of transition from health to disease.

Keywords : Family facing up; drug dependency in adolescents; family key informant; in-depth interviews.

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