Family Atmosphere and Relationships as Predictors of Heroin Addiction.

INTRODUCTION: Studies show that dysfunctional family relationships are important predictors of addictions to all psychoactive substances.

OBJECTIVE: To establish if there is a connection between family relations and heroin addiction and if found to exist, what is the quality of this connection.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS: This research was conducted on the sample comprised of 160 subjects divided into two groups. The first group consisted of 61 heroin addicts treated at the Tuzla University Clinical Centre Psychiatric Hospital. The second group consisted of 99 subjects who were students at the Tuzla University Faculties of Philosophy and Electrical Engineering and who were not using any psychoactive substances. The subjects were tested with the Quality of Family Interactions Scale (KOBI) which measures the interactions between children and parents in two dimensions, described in literature as 'acceptance' and 'rejection'.

RESULTS: The research team established statistically significant differences between the heroin addicts and the students, the non-users, in terms of their family relationships. The results show that the addicts families were characterized by lack of understanding, by conflicts, rejection, non-acceptance by parents, while the non-users families were characterized by understanding, acceptance by parents and good communication.

CONCLUSIONS: There is a connection between inter-family relationships and addiction. Namely, rejection and non-acceptance of children/persons by their families and parents, bad communication and dysfunctional family relationships are significant predictors of heroin addiction.