Alcoholism and the family: Narratives of alcoholic's women on the marital relationship in mutual-help groups in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This presentation is a research project in development. We aim to study the women’s perceptions and experiences associated to live with a alcoholic partner. We aim to understand how women in marital relationship with an alcoholic man mean that experience, considering how they perceive the marital relationship, and how they perceive their partner. From the idea that this experience often affects the physical and mental health of women, through illness, domestic violence, homicide and suicide, we seek to understand the formation and maintenance of the marital relationship, considering the influence of history-cultural mechanisms in this process. We search to know the women representations, through narratives, who attend the Brotherhood of mutual-aid from Al-Anon Family Groups, in Rio de Janeiro. Therefore, we invite to participate in this study only those women who are in a relationship with an alcoholic. We choose the Al-Anon Family Groups because these groups, which offer to alcoholic’s family environment of host and expression of their experiences, women alcoholics to make and share a single identity: "To be the woman of an alcoholic", producing together a meaning for this experience. This study will be qualitatively, through the completion of ethnography. We intend to use the techniques of participant observation and open interviews on the life story. Because the Al-Anon Family Groups are true devices for support for these women, knowledge of representations of them, which will reflect a collective discourse produced in these groups about the experience of marital relationship with an alcoholic man, it can guide health public policy, in the field of Women and Family’s Health, regarding the problem of alcoholism. This study will contribute to the deepening of existing studies about programs of care to the problems of alcoholism, which has been presented as one of the most serious problems of Public Health nowadays.