 |
| Kuva Kaija Tikkanen |
UNIVERSITY OF KUOPIO, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Nursing Science
Nursing science: Teacher training of nursing science
TIKKANEN KAIJA
The dynamic process of despair and hope in drug rehabilitation as
described by young drug abusers
Master´s thesis 95p, 3 appendices (9p)
Advisors: Senior lecturer, Jari Kylmä, Ph.D. Dean, Taru Juvakka, RN,
Ph.D. Psychotherapist, Tuula Lahtinen, M.NSc.
January 2004
Key words: despair, hope, the young, drugs
The aim of the study was to describe the process of hope in a young
person undergoing rehabilitation from drug abuse. The tasks of the study were
what the young say about hope, despair and the factors supporting and
complicating their awareness of hope. The study was made among 12 young adults
aged 18 - 25 years, five females and seven males. They were undergoing drug
rehabilitation in private rehabilitation units. Open unstructured individual
interviews (n=4), one semi-structured individual interview (n=1) and two
semi-structured group interviews (n=5, n=3) were used as the collecting methods
of the material. The material was analysed inductively using the method of
analysis of the contents.
The emerging describing factors of the world of drugs were the values
and attitudes in it, human relationships and their lack of confidence , the use
and the selling of drugs, the guilt and worry felt, how the young experiences
life, the contents of everyday life, and the making for rehabilitation. The
emerging describing factors of the process of rehabilitation were coming to the
drug rehabilitation and its early stages, social experience, and the recovery
from drug abuse. According to the results of the study, despair is an internal
conflict between reality and a real desire, of which the obscurity of the
purpose of life and the narrowing of life are part of. Hope is an individual,
omnipresent and positive basic asset of humanity which can increase. The
intensity of hope experience was related to the length of rehabilitation time.
The same factors can serve both as supporting and complicating elements in
awareness of hope depending on the life situation of the young. The factors
complicating the awareness of hope are to the drug abuse related anguish,
loneliness, the sense of losing control over one´s life and the sense of losing
one´s own humanity. The factors supporting the awareness of hope are the desire
of the young to be free of drugs, the reminiscence of the earlier normal life,
the realization of new possibilities in life in the present, and the
orientation into the future.
The results of this study can be utilised when developing methods of
treatment and rehabilitation of young drug addicts, in forming theory in
nursing science, and in future research.
