The association between marital status and alcohol abuse

¶ … Marital Status and Alcohol Abuse

Danielle Barwise

Alcohol Abuse and Relationships

Gaps in Previous Research and Need for the study

Participants

Measures

Marital Status

A significant amount of previous research has focused on the association between alcohol abuse and relationship status, including but not limited to the status of primary intimate relationships such as those seen in marriage and relationships associated with family and others. The significance of this research is that there is at least some evidence that the two factors, close relationship status and the presence or absence of alcohol abuse are somehow related. This work demonstrates an attempt through a careful analysis of secondary data from a primary research article to help illuminate what if any relationship there is between marital status and alcohol abuse. The author hypothesizes that alcohol abuse has a negative relationship in relationship however there

The Association between Marital Status and Alcohol Abuse

Alcohol Abuse and Relationships

According to Beck (2011), the author of an interesting memoir dealing with alcohol abuse and relationship communication, people can and do turn to alcohol when relationships go bad. In addition, they also turn to alcohol as a way of celebrating when relationships are good, so it would not be possible to say that alcohol is only used as one of the coping techniques by people who are struggling in their relationships or who have relationships that have ended badly. Yet, Beck (2011) does go on to say that there are many factors that would cause a person to use or abuse alcohol, including codependency, anxiety, and depression. The relationships that are seen among different people are generally more complex than one would think when just looking in from the outside, and that is important to consider when looking for correlations between alcohol abuse and relationships.

Kelley, Cash, Grant, Miles, & Santos (2004) address the issue of parental alcoholism and how it affects adult attachment in college-aged men and women. The goal of that study was to examine the relationships - both romantic and general - of men and women in college who had lived with an alcoholic parent prior to the age of 16. That group was then compared with a group who did not have an alcoholic parent in the home. Kelley, et al. (2004) found that the individuals who had at least one alcoholic