Growing up with parental substance use disorder: The struggle with complex emotions, regulation of contact, and lack of professional support

Abstract

The aim of the study was to explore young people's perceptions and reflections about growing up with parents who have substance use disorder (SUD). In qualitative inter-views with 12 young people (aged 13–26) and in an interpretative phenomenological analysis, we investigated their experiences of everyday life, of the relationships with the parents with SUD, and of conversations about this, both retrospectively and at the present. The findings indicated that the relationships with the parents largely occupied the informants, even when they lived separately from the parent and were protected from the daily exposure of substance use. The informants described their mixed and contradictory emotions towards their parents and the struggle to deter-mine regulation and type of contact. They asked for professional support in order to help them cope with this. Sociocultural discourses concerning family life and substance use were discussed in an attempt to understand the findings. The findings of the study suggest that children and young people should be offered sufficient professional support in order to cope with their mixed and contradictory emotions and to determine the regularity and type of contact with the parents.