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the use of cognitive compared to behavioural coping but the ratio of cognitive to behavioural coping changed in the high dependence group who showed a significant reduction in their level of substance use. Moreover, there was a significantly greater frequency of use of behavioural coping in the high dependence group in those people who became abstinent compared to those who did not. Such a difference was not found for the frequency of the use of cognitive coping in this high dependence group. On the other hand, in the low dependence group, there was a significantly greater frequency of use of both cognitive and behavioural coping in those who became abstinent at three months compared to those who did not. These findings suggest that behavioural coping may be more important to people with high levels of dependence than are cognitive coping strategies, but they also suggest that both forms of coping are equally used by people with low levels of dependence who change. Furthermore, the difference between the use of coping strategies in the low dependence groups that did and did not become abstinent is greater than in the high dependence group. This finding is at odds with the idea that people with high dependence might need to use more coping in order to change their substance use than people with low dependence. However, these results did suggest that something may be going on in those people who have high dependence and achieve abstinence and also in those who achieve reliable change in their level of dependence with regard to the coping strategies they use; the positive correlation found in the high dependence group between the amount of change in dependence and the frequency of behavioural coping, coupled with the relatively but not absolutely higher ratio of behavioural to cognitive coping in this group are further supportive of this possibility.
The model constructed for the purpose of investigating the variables which were predictive of dependence at three months and at twelve months included scores for coping at intake but this was not found to predict change in dependence either as a continuous variable or as a dichotomous variable. It may be that coping was affected by treatment and treatment had an effect on use which in turn has an effect on dependence. The coping strategies literature described in Chapter 6 was suggestive of a relationship between treatment and an increase in the use of behavioural coping; in the foregoing analysis, treatment was shown to be a predictor variable when abstinence or use was the dichotomous dependent variable, but not when a change in dependence was the dependent variable. Possible implications are discussed in Chapter 10.
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