The Relation Between Experiential Avoidance And Substance Use Disorder Among Male Drug Abusers

The problem of substance abuse has become widespread in society,not only causing trouble for addicts and their families,but also harming the harmonious atmosphere of society.There has been a much wider range of groups of drug abusers than before.Peaple of different ages,educatioanal degree,social status are suffering from substance use disorder.And also,teenagers are becoming a major group who have problems of drug using,which can be a terrible signal for the increasing depravation of our public security and social development.Therefore,effective prevention,treatment and prognosis for drug addiction has become very urgent.Based on the literature review and clinical experience,this research puts forward some assumptions about the psychological mechanism of addiction.They are as follows:(1)experiential avoidance can significantly predict motivation for drug use,and incongruence of self and experience can partially mediate the effect of experiential avoidance on motivation for drug use.(2)experiential avoidance can significantly predict motivation for abstinence,and incongruence of self and experience can mediate the effect of experiential avoidance on motivation forabstinence.(3)expeirential avoidance can directly predict motivation for drug use,and incongruence of self and experience can mediate the effect of experiential avoidance on both motivation for drug use and for abstinence;and also,motivation for drug use can significantly predict motivation for abstinence.Based on the Multi-dimensional Experientiall Avoidance Qustionnaire(MEAQ),study 1 compiled the brief chinese version of Multi-dimensional Experientiall Avoidance Qustionnaire.Three psychological gradutes,who are expert in the addiction field,translated the MEAQ into a chinese version by strictly following the rule of translation and back-translation.By extracting five representative items from every dimention of MEAQ(totally six dimensions),we got a preliminary questionnaire for experiential avoidance which contains 30 items in total.The questionnaire was applied to 1000 male drug abusers in the Compulsory Isolated Detoxification Center of Ziyang,and 818 of the questionnaires are valid.After item analysis,23 items are left to make up the questionnaire for re-test.And,the questionnaire contained four dimensions after exploratory factor analysis.And then,the questionnaire for re-test was measured among another 1000 male drug abusers.the questionnaire proved to be a good mesurement after conformatory factor analysis and the test of reliability and validity.In study 2,we used the compiled Brief Chinese Version of Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire,Self Congruence and Consistence Questionnaire,Drug Abuse Treatment Motivation Questionnaire and Drug Abuse Motivation Questionnaire to test the 1100 male drug abusers,and obtained 985 valid questionnaires.The bootstrap method is used to verify the mediation effect of inconsistency between self and experience on both motivation for drug use and for abstinence.And in study 3,the method of structural equation model was used to validate the structural model of experiential avoidance,incongruence of self and experience,motivation for drug use and motivation for abstinence.The conclusions are as follows:(1)The compiled Brief Chinese Version of Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire is a 23-item one,which follows the rule of six-point scoring and proves to have good reliability and validity.The questionnaire is divided into four dimensions,that is,escping,delaying,suppression and distress aversion.Their total interpretation rate is 45.75%,and internal consistency coefficient reaches 0.88.The internal consistency coefficient of the four dimensions ranges from 0.65 to 0.77.All of them are more than 0.6,proving their good reliability.According to the results of the first study,the questionnaire has good content validity,structural validity and criterion validity,and the compiled scale basically meets all the requirements.(2)Experiential avoidance can significantly predict the motivation for drug use,and inconsistency of self and experience partially mediates the effect of experiential avoidance on the motivation for drug use.(3)Experiential avoidance can significantly predict the motivation forabstinence,and inconsistency of self and experience mediates the effect of experiential avoidance on the motivation for abstinence.Indirect effect is positive,while direct effect is negative.(4)The proposed structural model owns a satisfactory model fit,which takes experiential avoidance as independent variable,inconsistency of self and experience as mediator variable,motivation for drug use and for abstinence as dependent variable.The outcomes indicates that expeirential avoidance can directly predict motivation for drug use,and inconsistency of self and experience can mediate the effect of experiential avoidance on both motivation for drug use and for abstinence;however,motivation for drug use can't significantly predict motivation for abstinence.In summary,drug users with high experiential avoidance tend to have lower levels of self congruence and consistency,especially strong conflict of self-concept and experience.They often can not accept the existing experience as it is;on the contrary,they tend to distort those unwanted experiences to adapt to the rigid self-concept,which therefore exacerbates their internal conflicts.And this state of internal conflict directly promote the individual to take drugs,and meanwhile the guilty feeling generated in the process may also promote the individual to enhance the motivation for abstinence.However,this strengthened motivation driven by guilty can not really help the individual get out of vicious cycle of drug addiction,but controversially exacerbates the internal conflicts.Thus,acceptance,as the mirror concept of experiential avoidance,should be taken as the key point in addiction treatment.Addicts need to accept and nonjudgementally experience negative emotions,whether it is craving or guilty.therefore,with reduced level of experiential avoidance,they can eventually get out of vicious cycle of drug addiction.