Anxiety and Depression in Family Members of People Struggling with Addiction

While providing understanding and help for people struggling with addiction is essential, providing the same service for family members who have experienced distress in response to a loved one’s struggle with addiction is vital as well. Therefore, the current research aims to shed light on an important topic that currently has little emphasis, understanding, or prior research: how addiction affects immediate family members’ anxiety and depression levels. It was hypothesized that anxiety and depression would be significantly higher in students who had a family member addicted to drugs or alcohol than those without an addicted family member. These hypotheses were not supported by the data; there was no difference in levels of anxiety or depression based on having a family member with an addiction to drugs or alcohol. These results are not consistent with prior research, indicating that further examination of addiction’s effects on immediate family members is needed