Indian Journal of Public Health Research & Development

Abstract

Background:The high rate of relapse is an especially frustrating problem and one of the most problems that face the substance abusers after a period of treatment remains old news. Little studies are documented about the addiction relapse in Iraq.

Objective:The current study aims to assess the causative factors affecting the substance abuse-related relapse. And find out the relationship between the clinical and demographic characteristics with relapse.

Methodology:A descriptive study was conducted from November 20 th 2016 to May 1 th 2017 on addict patients in Baghdad City. Purposive (non-probability) samples of 30 relapsed addicts who are inpatient in Ibn-Rushd Psychiatric Teaching Hospital and the Psychiatric unit of Baghdad Teaching Hospital who had undergone treatment for substance dependency and they had at least one episode of relapse during the period of addiction. The study uses the self-administrated questionnaire. The data has been analyzed by using the descriptive statistics (Frequencies, Percentages, Means and Standard Deviations (SD) and the inferential statistics (Chi-square to find out the relationships between the socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of addicts with relapse).

Results:The findings of the current study revealed that all relapsed patients are males with age ranged from 20 years to more than 50 years. The highest percentages of the addict patients were addicted to alcohol and two third of them have one previous admission. The results indicated that the factors of psychosocial and physical are associated with relapse to problematic alcohol or illicit drug use. There is no significant relationship between socio-demographic and clinical characteristics with relapse.

Recommendations: The researchers recommended may be there treatment programs focusing on teaching the clients how to cope with the relapse and control the feeling of craving for alcohol drink and substance abuse.

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