Family Recovery from Addiction and Trauma: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Mothers' Lived Experience

Addiction has a devastating impact in the lives of millions of people worldwide. Mothers constitute a hidden population. Previous research did not focus on mothers' experience of recovery.

An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyze the experiences of 10 mothers whose young adult son/or daughter was in recovery from addiction.

Four themes delineated mothers' lived experience of the long journey from traumatic loss and isolation to traumatic growth and connection: (a) Trauma and despair. Loss of relationships and healthy family life, (b) coping strategies, (c) finding meaning and constructing a new identity, and (d) connection and gratitude. Overall, halting the descent into despair involved a perceptual shift that restored meaning, relationships, and hope and alleviated mothers' feelings of chronic grief and distress over their adult child's addiction problems.

Addiction can have a damaging traumatic impact on mothers which is enhanced by social and self-stigmatizing processes. Ambiguous loss can occur when one's child uses substances, as the child may be physically present yet be psychologically absent in terms of the mother (and the family). Understanding the experience of mothers may help health and social care professionals to develop compassion, patience, and empathy towards mothers of persons with addiction problems. Mental health professionals need to be aware of the devastating impact of addiction problems on all family members in order to validate their experiences and support them in recovering from trauma and loss in the family.