The Assessment and Comparison of Rate of Violence Experienced by Wives of Addicts and Non-Addicts

Addiction is a serious problem which threatens millions of people. Addiction not only affects the individuals, it also confronts the family with a multitude of problems. The aim of this paper is to compare the rate of violence as experienced among wives of addicts and non-addicts. Among addicts who came to our counselling centre, seeking treatment to quit their addiction, 107 of their wives were selected through random cluster sampling, and compared with 107 wives of non-addicts, in terms of their age, economic and educational status, and occupational situation, in Hafshéjn city. The rate of experienced violence was assessed with researcher’s inventory. The rate of women’s social support was evaluated with Procidano’s Inventory. The validity of this inventory was 0.81. The distinction of achieved violence number between the two groups and sub-scales was shown to be significant, using ANOVA. The rate of experienced violence was significant with the education level among safe groups. There was negative correlation between the level of social support and violence experienced rate in non-addict group but that was not significant in addict group. The income level was significant with violence experienced rate in addict group. The number of children and years of marriage were not significant in relation to experienced violence neither in non-addict nor in addict group.