Women in Substance Abuse Recovery: Measures of Resilience and Self-Differentiation.

The National Institute of Drug Abuse has promoted drug abuse research in the past two decades focusing on women and gender differences. One hundred twenty-eight Hispanic and White women have participated in this comparative descriptive study that has examined the differences between chemically dependent (CD) women in recovery and non-chemically dependent (non-CD) women in regard to resilience and self-differentiation-demographic variables associated with resilience and self-differentiation and recovery variables associated with resilience and self-differentiation in the CD women. Findings indicate that the CD women and Hispanic women have scored significantly lower on measures of resilience and self-differentiation. Among the recovery variables, resilience and self-differentiation are significant for children support but community support is not significant. The finding that Hispanic and White women in recovery score lower on resilience and self-differentiation is important for designing treatment strategies supportive of women in recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]