A study that was made among 30 African American women in Mississippi Delta in nature and all of them were in a substance abuse program in Delta. They were interviewed to talk about what they used to live when they were under substance abuse. Basically, they have shown how doing drugs was a life chose, how their physical mind was at that time and what has motivated them to start a treatment to stop those addictions. Also, they talked about how they were neglected from their society and this type of environmental factors does not help African American women in rural areas that are substance abuse and are already depressed. In the DSM-III-R those substances used are classified as organic mood syndrome depressed type. It is known that the organic mood syndrome is a component that we find every time someone has depressive symptoms. (Brown, 2003).
All those women that has suffered from substance abuse admitted that the period where they used to be under substances they were feeling depression. Also, they said that when they were under that depression they did not have a consciousness about knowing that they were under depression. In addition, most of those African American women where not really aware about the dangerousness of being depressed and that it was considered as a serious illness. After going through such experiences those African American women understood that living that way was not a good option. Also, they explained how that hard expression based on changing moods and depression made their life awful and unlivable even thought at the beginning of substance abuse life seemed to be perfect.
To conclude, Substance use is a big dilemma for all families and basically for the whole society. First, it is not only demolishing the people that are under substance abuse but also the people that are close to them and society. It damages the person in all aspects: economically, morally, physically and psychologically. In addition, people that are substance use disorder are exposed to bad things that follows as some loss of prosperity, respect, emotional problems and also health problems. They also tend to blame themselves for being responsible of the conditions they are into. (Brown, 2003). This issue makes a dual combination with depression that leads people to act dangerously because of the state of mind they are into. The idea is to start preventing more and to search many cures for the people that start dealing with substance abuse and living a hard time with depression. Those people need social support and not to be considered differently because it is a real dilemma that only us we can solve.
