Risk and Resilience: The Family Experience of Adolescents with an Addicted Parent

Natti Ronel, Ronit Haimoff-Ayali

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

The family relationships of adolescents brought up by an addicted parent were studied in a qualitative research. The authors interviewed 19 adolescents, all of whom had a parent either actively addicted to drugs or else recovering addicts. The participants were assigned to one of two groups based on the degree to which they maintained normative lives or descended into addiction. It was found that the relative strength of the adolescents within the triad of forces (mother, father, self) had great significance for their development. Younger siblings awakened a desire to protect them from a life of addiction. The extended family was also found to have a potential to influence, in keeping with the significance the young people attributed to these relatives. The results indicate a definition, the first of its kind, of subjective risk and protective factors representing subjective perceptions of the reality of the lives of the participants.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)448-472
Number of pages25
JournalInternational Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology
Volume54
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2010

Keywords

  • Addicted parent
  • Adolescents
  • Phenomenology
  • Protective factors
  • Resilience
  • Risk factors

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Risk and Resilience: The Family Experience of Adolescents with an Addicted Parent'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this