Functionality of Family Relationships and Parenting Style in Families of Adolescents with Substance Abuse Problems

AbstractIn this paper we considered family functioning from a systemic perspective, while we try to point out the relationship between patterns of family functioning, parenting style of the parents and adolescents’ addiction diseases. The research was conducted with the aim to determine a correlation between a functionality of family systems, parenting style of parents and presence of adolescents’ substance abuse problems (alcoholism and drug addiction). A FACES III (Olson, Portner & Levi,1985) and EMBU (Arrindell, 2005) scales were used in order to establish patterns of family functioning and of parenting style of the parents. Two groups of adolescents were examined: 50 adolescents with addiction diseases (alcoholism and drug addiction) who had ambulance or hospital treatment at the Clinic for Mental Health Protection in Nis and 50 adolescents who do not have any problems with addiction. The results of the research showed that there are statistically significant differences between these two groups: in terms of the patterns of family functioning, it could be noted that the patterns of disengaged family functioning, parenting style based on rejection and overprotecting and a significant presence of incomplete family systems were much more dominant for adolescents with addiction diseases. Also, results showed that there is a correlation between family functioning, parenting style and the presence of addiction diseases which shows the need of family support in order to accomplish adequately parenting function. In organizing certain interventions in the family system it is important to have in mind that separately focused interventions which are directed towards parenting, have short-dated effects and that influences directed towards the functioning of the whole family system are much more adequate, which is actually our approach in this paper