POSTER PRESENTATION
Character strengths as mediators in Christian mindfulness based intervention for recovery from addictive behaviour: an exploratory case-study
There is an increasing interest in studying the relationship between addiction and spirituality within the framework of psychology. For instance, an online bibliography on spirituality and addiction developed by Geppert and colleagues (Centre on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions,New Mexico) now has over 2000 entries. Interest in researching the effect of mindfulness on recovery is also on the rise. Generally, religiosity has been found to have some protective effect on addictive behaviour, and spirituality is said to sustain maintenance of recovery. There have been some, but limited, attempts at exploring the mechanisms and mediators of the association between spirituality and recovery from addiction. There is a lack, however, in finding a viable theoretical framework within which to interpret this relationship. Can the mediators of the association between spirituality and recovery from addiction be explored in terms of character strengths within the theoretical framework of positive psychology?
This paper reports a case-study from a larger project that attempted to answer the research question in a two part empirical study carried out inNairobi,Kenya. The first part looked at the correlation between addiction and character strengths through a survey, and the second part was an intervention study to test the efficacy of Christian mindfulness to boost up the salient character strengths and to facilitate recovery from addiction. The intervention that lasted ten weeks, with one weekend residential session and nine weekly sessions of ninety minutes each, consisted of training in a technique of Christian contemplative practice, labyrinth walking, and mindfulness journaling.
The present case-study examines in some detail the experience of two participants from the intervention phase, who were selected by purposeful sampling. The data for the case-study were gathered through the journal entries, a semi-structured interview in the tenth week, and a follow up email correspondence four months after the end of the intervention, in addition to the pre- and post-test results of Values in Action- Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS), the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), and the Sexual Addiction Screening Test (SAST). The qualitative data were analysed using an Interpretative-Phenomenological-Analysis approach.
Emerging patterns show that while for the male participant (aged 27) recovery from dependent drinking took a path-way that featured the character strengths of self-awareness (personal intelligence and wisdom), humility, and spirituality leading to social responsibility, for the female participant (aged 20) reduced problem drinking and tendency towards sexual addiction took the pathway of self-regulation, spirituality, and forgiveness leading to social intelligence. These findings could be corroborated through triangulation involving a discussion with other published spirituality-recovery literature. The case-study suggests that the Christian mindfulness intervention seems to facilitate an emergence of a three-dimensional spirituality that involves the self, God, and others. In general, the results indicate that the VIA offers a viable theoretical framework to explore the association between spirituality and recovery, though there is a need for a comprehensive but parsimonious quantitative measure of character strengths.