Psychological hardiness, personality factors and coping styles in male patients of alcohol dependence syndrome

Vaibhav J Khadse; Harpreet Singh Dhillon; Shibu Sasidharan

doi:10.1016/j.mjafi.2022.07.007

Psychological hardiness, personality factors and coping styles in male patients of alcohol dependence syndrome

Med J Armed Forces India. 2024 Mar-Apr;80(2):172-177. doi: 10.1016/j.mjafi.2022.07.007. Epub 2023 Oct 14.

Authors

Vaibhav J Khadse¹, Harpreet Singh Dhillon², Shibu Sasidharan³

Affiliations

¹ Assistant Professor (Psychiatry), INHS Sanjivani, Kochi, India.
² Assistant Professor (Psychiatry), Military Hospital, Jammu, India.
³ Assistant Professor (Psychiatry), Level III Hospital, Goma, Congo.

PMID: 38525456
PMCID: PMC10954500 (available on 2025-03-01)
DOI: 10.1016/j.mjafi.2022.07.007

Abstract

Background: Alcohol dependence syndrome (ADS) is a result of complex interplay between biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors. While the biological (genetic) factors remain non-modifiable, better understanding of individual hardiness, personality variables, and coping mechanisms can help us in better understanding and comprehensive management of the illness.

Methods: A cross-sectional comparative study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital. A total of 112 patients with ADS (test group) and 124 healthy age matched male controls were recruited from the same social milieu. They were assessed for hardiness, personality factors, and coping mechanisms using Hardiness scale, 16 Personality factors (5th Edition), and Brief COPE scale, respectively. The data were analyzed with Chi square, Student t tests (two tailed, unpaired), Mann Whitney U test, and Kruskal Waal analysis.

Results: The test group had less hardy personality compared to control group (25% vs 43.54%) (p = 0.002). The level of Hardiness had an inverse relationship with alcohol dependence (p = 0.886). The majority of patients with ADS had high score on extraversion (p < 0.001), anxiety (p < 0.001), and tough-mindedness (p < 0.001), and the severity of alcohol dependence had an inverse relationship with extraversion (p = 0.004) and self-control (p = 0.002). The severity of ADS was directly related to the use of emotional support (p = 0.007) and substance use (p = 0.005) as coping mechanisms while the use of instrumental support (p = 0.001) and humor (p < 0.001) had inverse relationship with the severity of ADS.

Conclusions: ADS had less hardy personality and the level of hardiness had inverse relationship with alcohol dependence. The severity of alcohol dependence had an inverse relationship with extraversion and self-control. In terms of coping styles, substance use and use of emotional support was found to be directly related with the severity of alcohol dependence while the use of instrumental support and humor were found to be protective against severe dependence.

Keywords: Alcohol use disorder; Coping; Hardiness; Personality.