Social support and relapse tendency in Chinese women experiencing heroin addiction: A moderated mediation model of active coping strategies and openness to experience

ABSTRACT

Psychological factors play a critical role in the treatment of heroin addiction in women, especially in the prevention of relapse. However, little empirical research has explored how social support, active coping strategies, and openness to experience affect relapse tendency in Chinese women experiencing addiction. In a cross-sectional design, 467 Chinese women experiencing heroin addiction (aged 12–57 years) completed self-report measures of social support, active coping strategies, openness to experience, and relapse tendency. Then, the moderated mediation model was tested. The results show that active coping strategies completely mediated the relationship between social support and relapse tendency. Further, the mediated effect of active coping strategies on relapse tendency was moderated by openness to experience. Surprisingly, the role of social support for Chinese women experiencing addiction as an active coping strategy decreases as the level of openness to experience increases. Because this result seems to be different from results of existing research from Western cultures, we speculate that it may be related to the cultural background of Chinese collectivism. All in all, this study helps to better understand how social support acts on relapse tendencies. More importantly, the study of openness to experience provides some new ideas for addiction treatment and intervention in different cultural contexts. This will serve to sensitize researchers and professionals to the significance of cultural context and the bias of Western norms and values in many psychological measures.

KEYWORDS:

• Social support
• Relapse tendency
• Active coping strategies
• Openness to experience
• Heroin addiction
• Moderated mediation model

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Project No. 31760283) grant to Gang Cheng, and was supported by a PhD early development program of Guizhou Normal University (2017) awarded to Gang Cheng by the Guizhou Normal University (GZNU). The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in the paper are solely of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of NSFC and GZNU.