Drug addiction is a global issue that affects every country, including Malaysia. According to, ¹ around 275 million people worldwide have engaged in drug misuse, with up to 36 million of those people suffering from substance abuse disorders. Meanwhile the statistics from Ref. 2 shown there were 142,199 drug misuse cases in Malaysia in 2019, compared to a population of approximately 32.4 million to 32.6 million Malaysians. These figures indicate that around one person in every 229 people in Malaysia is a drug user. At least 95.5 percent of drug addicts are men, while women make up only 4.5 percent.

Drug abuse has a harmful impact not only on the addicted person, but also on their family members. A previous study found that people who live with drug abusers are stressed out a lot ³ and women who are drug addicts’ wives or mothers face more severe negative consequences than other family members. ^{4 – 7} For the wives of drug addicts, mental health is a major issue. ^{8 – 16} Wives of drug addicts also often have problems with their social networks, like not being able to get help from others and not being able to keep in touch with family and friends, ^{10 , 13 , 16 – 18} experiencing violence and persecution, ^{10 , 12 , 17 , 19 – 21} experiencing issues related to marital conflict ^{8 , 10 , 18 , 22} and experiencing economic strain. ^{12 , 14 – 17 , 22 – 25} It is predicted that the wives of drug users will have a negative impact on their overall wellbeing as a result of having to deal with a large number of negative situations. However, although the wives of drug addicts face a variety of difficulties in their lives, not everyone wishes for the marriage to end in a dissolution. One of the reasons wives want to stay with their husbands is a sense of obligation to help their husbands deal with addiction and worry about life after separation because they have strong physical and emotional ties with their partners. ¹⁸ Thus, a study should be conducted to see how they deal with them. This is because living with drug addicts without the right coping skills will have a negative effect on their wellbeing.

The Stress Strain Coping Support Model is one of the models that focuses on the stress and strain experienced by the wife of a drug addict. ²⁶ The main idea behind this model is that people who are stressed because family members have addiction problems can respond to that stress and reduce the amount of strain they experience. The stress that families feel because of their loved one’s addiction problems can come in many different forms, including family problems, life management issues, and concerns about money and resources. ²⁷ The concept of stress was measured in this study using the concept of family impact, which includes marital conflict and economic strain. The strain felt by family members of addicts is a direct result of the environment in which they live. According to this model, family member strain refers to the health of family members. These health problems arise as a result of the addict’s immediate family members experiencing behavioural disorders, distinctive changes, and serious challenges. Health issues that affect direct family members can range from physical to psychological. The concept of strain was measured in this study using mental wellbeing. It is assumed that the stress that drug users’ wives suffer contributes to their poor mental wellbeing. The existence of symptoms of either happy feelings or positive functioning in life can be regarded as mental wellbeing. ²⁸ The concept of mental wellbeing, according to Ref. 29, encompasses two perspectives: a subjective experience perspective on happiness (affect) and life satisfaction (hedonic perspective); and a positive psychological functioning perspective on good relationships with others and self-realization (eudaimonia perspective).

Coping is an important concept in the SSCS model, which means that family members who face problems in their lives because of the involvement of immediate family members with addiction problems must figure out how to understand and respond to family problems. The way a family understands and responds to the problems they face is a sign of how well they are coping. Coping is a broad term that refers to an effort that entails cognitive and behavioural processes in order to deal with an unpleasant event in life ³⁰ while ³¹ define coping as the variety of ways in which individuals think and behave in response to problems and stress. Coping is a fundamental premise of the SSCS model because it assumes that family members are not helpless but capable of improving their own health. ³² describe three coping strategies used by family members to deal with their family members’ addictions: putting up, withdrawing, and engaging in active coping, or standing up. Even though the SSCS model is often used to look at the relationships between these variables, some of the model’s flaws have been found. To begin with, it is ineffective at examining how stress affects strain because it uses data from European countries such as Mexico, England, and Italy. However, it excludes data from Asian and Muslim countries. ²⁷ Second, the SSCS model focuses on interpersonal coping, and an examination of intrapersonal coping is necessary. ¹¹ Third, the role of coping as a moderating or mediating factor in the relationship between stress and strain remains unclear and requires additional research. ³³

As a result, this study was conducted to close the gap that currently exists: 1) the respondents in this study are Muslim wives of drug addicts in Malaysia. 2) recognise the scope of coping specifically through concept of coping process introduced by Ref. 32. According to Ref. 32 coping is a behaviour in which the process of adaptation occurs during a stressful situation and is classified into four adaptive modes: physiology, self-concept, role function and interdependence. 3) this study determined the role of coping as a mediating factor in the relationship between family impact and mental wellbeing.

Based on the preceding discussion, the purpose of this study was to identify the association between the family impact experienced by wives of drug addicts in terms of economic strain and marital conflict, as well as their ability to cope and their mental wellbeing. In addition, this study looks into the role of coping as a mediator between family impact and mental wellbeing relationship. The conceptual framework of this study is as shown in Figure 1.

Marriage is a natural part of practically everyone’s life. According to a prior study, married individuals had a higher sense of wellbeing than unmarried, divorced, or widowed individuals. ^{34 – 37} However, the problems that married couples have because their husbands are addicted to drugs have a negative effect on the quality of their marriage. ^{38 – 40} Numerous previous studies have examined the relationship between family impact such as marital conflict and various aspects of wellbeing. The majority of previous research has established a direct link between marital conflict and aspects of life quality, such as mental health, ^{41 – 44} subjective wellbeing, ⁴⁵ life satisfaction ⁴⁶ and suicide ideation. ^{44 , 47} However, ⁴⁸ study contradicts the findings of other researchers, as he discovered that marital conflict has no significant relationship with psychological wellbeing.

Additionally, previous researchers examined the relationship between the variables in this study. A study conducted by Refs. 3, 49 discovered a significant relationship between family impact, coping, and strain among addicts’ family members. In a study of infertile couples, ⁵⁰ found that marital satisfaction, marital communication, conflict resolution style, and coping were all linked to each other. ³³ conducted a study to examine the association between family impact and involvement coping, tolerance coping, depression, anxiety, stress, and quality of life, and discovered a strong relationship between these variables. Withdrawal coping, on the other hand, has not been linked to stress. The study by Ref. 51 found that higher levels of burden showed significant associations with greater psychological distress and more use of coping, whereas greater acceptance of the situation showed an association with less psychological distress.

Numerous researchers have examined the capacity for coping as a mediator between the relationship between family impact and strain. However, the methods used by previous researchers to assess family impact and strain are clearly different. Study conducted by ⁵ examined stress and strain using the Family Member Impact Scale and the Symptom Rating Scale. This study discovered that involvement and tolerant coping both function as partial mediators of family stress and strain. ⁴⁹ Horváth and Urbán used the Zarit burden interview - short version to assess stress, while Beck hopelessness scale - short version was used to assess strain. The study’s findings indicate that tolerant inactive is a significant mediator of the stress-strain relationship. Coping’s ability to act as a mediator is also supported by Ref. 3 findings that coping acts as a significant mediator between stress and strain. However, the findings of ³³ study differ from those of other researchers. Significant mediators for stress-strain relationships were not found to be coping.

According to the literature review above, the following gaps were discovered during the analysis of this previous study; First, the findings regarding the relationship between the variables are varied. Second, this previous study did not include wives of drug addicts in its sample selection; rather, it included a variety of samples, including wives of alcohol addicts, ⁵² married couples in general, ⁴⁶ working wives, ^{43 , 47} and patients diagnosed with depression. ⁴² Third, studies involving Malaysian participants are still lacking. Fourth, ⁴⁹ suggest that the measurement tools used to measure variables should also be different. Thus, a study focusing on the wives of low-income drug addicts in Malaysia is necessary to examine the relationship between family impact, coping, and mental wellbeing in the Malaysian context.

The purpose of this study was to see if there was an association between family impact, coping, and mental wellbeing. The goal of the study is also to figure out what role coping plays in the relationship between family impact and mental wellbeing for low-income drug addicts’ wives. The findings of the study indicate that family impact has a significant association with coping. Coping was also discovered to have a substantial association with mental wellbeing. The family impact, on the other hand, was found to have an indirect association with mental wellbeing through coping rather than a direct relationship. This means that coping plays a big part in the way that family impact and mental wellbeing are linked.

The findings of this study are consistent with those of ⁵² who discovered that there is no direct association between family impact (marital conflict) and mental wellbeing. Furthermore, the findings of this study contradict those of ^{41 – 47} who discovered a direct association between these two factors. This study’s findings are also in line with those of, ^{3 , 33 , 49 , 50} who found that family impact on coping and coping with strain are linked. The ability of coping as a significant mediator in the relationship between family impact and mental wellbeing is also in line with the findings of, ^{3 , 5 , 49} while contradicting the findings of. ³³ It is critical to highlight, however, that prior research employed a different concept to measure stress and strain. The current study measured the impact on families in terms of marital conflict and economic strain. Current research also uses a variety of different tools to assess coping and strain, making it impossible to duplicate previous findings.

The dimensions found in the coping construct developed by ⁸³ must be examined to explain how coping acts as a mediator factor in the relationship between family impact and mental well-being. The primary dimensions found in the coping and adaptation processing construct are resourceful and focused. When dealing with stress, being resourceful and focused reflects behaviours that make use of oneself and one’s resources. It focuses on increasing input, being creative, and achieving results. The second dimension, physical and fixed, emphasises physical reactions as well as the input phase of dealing with situations. Alert processing is a coping and adaptation dimension that employs behaviours that represent both the personal and physical self. It focuses on all three processing levels: input, central, and output. As a coping dimension, systematic processing describes personal and physical strategies used to take in situations and methodically handle them. Finally, knowing and relating is a dimension in which strategies reflect the use of oneself and others, memory, and imagination. It can be shown that, despite the fact that people are exposed to numerous sorts of stress, they can achieve mental well-being by improving their coping processes in these four aspects.

There are some limitations to this study. For starters, the study’s cross-sectional design made it difficult for researchers to make causal findings. Second, the study’s sample size was tiny, and it was chosen using a nonprobability sampling method. As a result, generalisations are impossible. Third, one crucial feature of the SSCS model, namely social support, was not included in this study. As a result, there was no way to determine the role of social support in examining the relationship between familial impact and mental wellbeing. However, there are some positive aspects to this research. First, the findings of this study can give drug users’ wives an early sense of the necessity of building coping and mental wellbeing when dealing with family stress. Second, the findings of this study can be used by professionals in this field to help the wives of drug addicts improve their mental health. Therefore, there are some recommendations for future studies. First, a longitudinal study can be done to look at the causal relationship. Second, sample selection should be done using a probability sampling method to enable the results of the study to be generalized. Third, using the same concepts and measurements as in this study, the role of social support in the relationship between family impact and mental wellbeing needs to be explored.

Haikal Anuar Adnan: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Software, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing. Zarinah Arshat: Funding acquisition, Supervision, Methodology, Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. Nurul Saidatus Shaja’ah Ahmad Shahril: Data Curation, Project Administration, Writing – review & editing.