Subjective Wellbeing and Substance Dependence: a Comparative Study

The present study compared substance dependents who go for de-addiction with those who don't go for de-addiction on the basis of subjective wellbeing. The sample consists of (N=100) drug addict males taken from district Srinagar. One group of subjects (N=50) include those drug addicts who were attending drug de-addiction centers. Another group of drug addicts (N=50), taken from different areas of district Srinagar include those drug addicts who don't go for drug de-addiction. Alcohol smoking and substance involvement screening test was first used to screen the individuals for substance dependence and then Subjective Wellbeing Inventory by Nagpal and Sell (1992) was used to assess the subjective wellbeing of the participants. The results in this study showed that t-values of the two factors of the subjective wellbeing, i.e., confidence in coping (t=2.402*) and perceived ill health (t=2.096*) were found significant beyond 0.05 levels of significance. However the t-values of the all other factors like General wellbeing positive affect (t=0.853), Expectation achievement congruence (t=0.977), Transcendence (t=0.073), Family group support (t=0.000), social support (t=0.922) Primary group concern (t=1.922), Inadequate mental mastery (t=0.826), Deficiency in social contacts (t=1.034) and general wellbeing negative affect (t=1.006) were found as insignificant even at 0.05 level of significance.