At the above website I found a very interesting study discussing the relationship between addiction and early maladaptive schemas. This study indicates that the cognitive make-up of individuals influences how their biology and environment will affect them.
I especially think the graph is useful in seeing visual representation of the differences between addicts and non-addicts.
Shaghaghy, PhD, Farhad, Majid Saffarinia, PhD, Mohadeseh Iranpoor, and Ali Soltanynejad. "The Relationship of Early Maladaptive Schemas, Attributional Styles and Learned Helplessness among Addicted and Non-Addicted Men."Millennium Web Catalog. Kerman University of Medical Sciences, 18 Mar. 2011. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.
Addiction is considered as one of the major problems in family and community in the world. According to the World Heart Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) drug abuse is on the upswing.1
Social science and psychology researchers believe that studying the causes of people’s tendency to drug abuse is one of the requirements to reduce addiction. They assume that addiction is a multifactorial phenomenon divided into three categories including sociocultural, biological, and psychological factors.
Among these, psychological factors are very important. Psychologists believe that the effects of biological and sociocultural factors are affected by psychological trends.
According to cognitive view, organizing the experiences determines how to behave. Organizing the experiences is based on cognitive processes and any disruption in these processes can create behavioral, emotional and communicational problems.3
Cognitive theorists developed a new approach to treat a variety of mental health problems, including personality disorders and addictive behaviors, by focusing specifically on the development of dysfunctional schema that emerge during childhood.4
Early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) are chronically self-defecting emotional and cognitive patterns that develop early in life. They are the causes of many psychological disorders. Maladaptive schemas and inefficient ways the patient learns to adapt with others often lead to chronic symptoms of anxiety, depression and substance abuse.5
Based on the revised model of learned helplessness theory, another factor that increases a person's vulnerability is attributional style which means how individuals explain different events. It means that when individuals encounter an unpleasant and uncontrollable event, they are interested in recognizing the cause. Abramson states three indexes for this issue namely internal/external, stable/unstable, and specific/global. Therefore, if a person attributes a bad event to a stable, internal, and global cause, it can result in learned helplessness (LH)
Comparing means of attributional styles of addicts and non-addicts showed significant differences between optimistic and pessimistic attributional styles, i.e. addicts were more pessimistic and developed LH more. Although these findings are consistent with studies conducted by Haj Hosseini, and also Garcia et al.,20,21 Fletcher did not find a significant difference between addicts and non-addicts in terms of attributional styles.6 and his findings indicate that LH is related to relapse to addiction after treatment. He stated that pessimistic addicts were more likely to return to substance abuse.6 We also found a direct relationship between LH and successful addiction treatment. Therefore, addicts who suffered more from LH were less successful in treatment and more likely to relapse to substance abuse.
Pearson correlation between EMS and pessimistic attributional style in addicts revealed positive relationships between pessimism and defect/shame, dependence/incompetence, and emotional inhibition schemas. Therefore, more pessimistic addicts had more sever schemas. In addition, Pearson correlation between LH and EMS in addicts indicated direct relationships between LH and entitlement, emotional inhibition, dependence/incompetence, failure, defect/shame, social isolation, abandonment, and emotional deprivation. These findings are consistent with Aimee’s research which found dependence/incompetence schema related to LH.4 Similarly, Hoffart and Sexton, and Tarquinio also suggested that since emotional deprivation, mistrust/abuse, social isolation vulnerability to harm and compliance were related to pessimism, schema therapy would lead to increased optimistic attribution.22,23 Likewise, Tilden and Dattilio, and Hoffart et al. found a positive relationship between pessimistic attributional style and EMS in depressed individuals and many couples with marital problems.24,25
At the end, according to what was mentioned in this study, addicts have more cognitive problems in comparison with non-addicts. Therefore, it is necessary to pay more attention to cognitive factors in addiction treatment to increase the success rate of the treatment.
Conclusion
Our study showed that addicts suffer from high levels of early maladaptive schemas. They had a more pessimistic attributional style. Moreover, addicts who developed higher levels of learned helplessness were less successful in addiction treatment and more likely to use drugs again after treatment. These issues show that addiction institutions and therapists have to pay attention to cognitive factors for addiction prevention.
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