This study has as main objective to emphasize the implications of mood patterns in the maintenance of the drug addiction cycle, in family systems with chemical dependents, assuming that there is a correlation between drug addiction and mood disorders or perturbations. We considered important to investigate how depression and mania patterns, recursively, affect and are affected by the family system with a chemical-dependent member. We presented a case study of structural and strategic family therapy, in a family with an addicted member. We analyzed the results of the study, by focusing on both, the data that emerged from those models of therapy, and on descriptive categories related to mood patterns created by Stierlin, Weber, Schmidt and Simon (1986), who worked with families presenting mood disorders. The study helped to enlarge our views on the several factors that can influence the maintenance of drug dependence in family systems with addicted members.
Family relationship; drug addiction; mood disorders
