Traumatic symptoms and related factors in alcohol and substance use disorders

Introduction: Addiction is a long-term disease with remission and relapses. Traumatic life events are negative events that almost everyone can experience, which disrupt or hurt the common mental and physical integrity. Traumatic life events are more important in people with substance addiction due to various factors. Although relapse rates are affected by many factors in addiction, traumatic life events are also one of these factors. The goal of our study was to investigate the traumatic life events in addiction, other factors affecting it and the relationship between these factors and the course of treatment. Methods: Patients diagnosed with alcohol or substance use disorder according to DSM-V at the Sakarya Training and Research Hospital Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment and Training Center inpatient clinic and who met the inclusion criteria were included in the study. Sociodemographic Data Form, Hamilton Depression (HAM-D), Hamilton Anxiety (HAM-A), Dissociative Experiences (DES), Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), Traumatic Experiences Checklist (TEC), Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), State-Trait Anxiety Scale (STAI-TX), Dependency Profile Index (BAPI), Stages of Change Readiness and Treatment Eagerness Scale (SOCRATES) were applied on the 7th day of their hospitalization. Six months after discharge from the hospital, patients were re-evaluated in terms of relapse by calling by phone, examining the hospital records, analyzing the substance in the urine, getting information from the patients and their relatives to evaluate the prognosis of the disease. Statistical analyzes were evaluated using SPSS version 23 program. p>0.05 value was considered statistically significant. Results: In our study, patients with alcohol / substance use disorders were classified into two groups as relapse and remission after discharge. A total of 51 patients were included in the study, 49 patients were reached. Relapses were detected in 60,8% of the patients reached. There wasn't any significant difference between the two groups for socio-demographic factors, addiction profile, depression, motivation, suicide attempt rates, recurrent hospitalizations for addiction treatment, drop out from treatment, traumatic event experience, mean trauma age and PTSD symptom severity. Anxiety (p:0.015), dissociation symptoms (p:0.026), previous psychiatric treatment application (p:0.019), number and severity of traumatic events (p:0.04 and p:0.01), the changes in the post-traumatic substance use behavior pattern (p:0.014), the time of changes in the post-traumatic substance use behavior pattern (p:0.049 for changes in the first 2 weeks) were statistically significantly different between the relapsed and non-relapsed groups. In addition, neglect (p:0.009), emotional abuse (p:0.019) and physical abuse (p:0.005) were statistically significantly different in trauma types between the relapsed and non-relapsed groups. It was found that five of the significant variables strongly predicted relapse (CI;%95, p:0.002) in the Binary Logistic Regression model (the number of trauma, DES score, HAM-A score, not applying for psychiatric treatment before, and changes in substance use behavior after traumatic life event). When the variables were evaluated individually, it was found that not applying for psychiatric treatment before predicted the relapse strongly. Discussion and conclusion: Many factors affecting relapse have been prospectively and retrospectively investigated in patients with alcohol and substance use disorders. Among these factors, sociodemographic features, depression and anxiety symptoms, comorbid psychiatric conditions, substance use severity, and motivation were the targets of these studies. Prospective studies investigating the relapse rates after treatment, in which these factors are examined with a history of trauma, are rare in the literature. In addition, current studies investigating the effect of traumatic state on relapses mostly focused on PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) or included only women and focused on childhood traumas, did not include other factors in studies or worked with specific addiction groups. In this regard, in our study, similar results are found in the literature, but new and important information is also presented. According to the results of our study, anxiety have been associated with relapses, similar to previous studies. In our study, it is an important finding that changes in the substance use behavior pattern after traumatic event, the time of changes in the substance use behavior pattern after traumatic event, the lack or absence of previous psychiatric treatment application and dissociation symptoms are closely related to relapse rates, but there is not enough research in the literature on this subject. One of the important results is that the number and severity of traumatic events with few studies in the literature affect the relapse rates of various types of trauma such as neglect, emotional abuse, and physical abuse. All these findings show that being applied to psychiatric treatment, the lack of traumatic life experiences independent from the diagnosis of PTSD, and no behavioral change related to post-experience substance use, low anxiety and dissociative symptoms during evaluation were associated with low relapse rates. However, these results need to be confirmed by studies with a larger sample. Keywords: Substance Abuse, Traumatic Events, PTSD, Relapse, Prognosis, Treatment Application