The lived experiences of recovering Filipino persons who use drugs (PWUDs) without family support

The Philippines’s war on drugs brought about an influx or people of who use drugs (PWUDs) availing of community-based drug rehabilitation services for treatment. Programs have been created to develop skills to avoid relapse and improve family relations and support throughout the recovery process. However, not all Filipino PWUDs have the immediate presence or active participation of their families. While family support is construed as critical to sustained drug recovery in most existing studies, very few studies looked into this subset of PWUDs. In a Filipino culture wherein one’s family is integral to one’s personal identity, an interpretative phenomenological analysis was conducted to examine the experiences of Filipino PWUDs in recovery without perceived family support. Results present four main themes on the experiences of (1) loss and longing while in recovery, (2) coping, (3) self-improvement, and (4) rekindling, rejoining and restarting social connections. Insights from this study can be used in understanding the Filipino way of coping in the relative absence of one’s kin, reconstructing the role of family support and extending the meaning of family in the recovery of PWUDs, and finding ways to redesign family interventions in the Philippines

“Bakit Ka Kumakayod?” Developing a Filipino Needs Theory of Motivation

This study utilized a mixed method sequential exploratory strategy in investigating the needs of the Filipino working population and the relationship between these needs and employee engagement. In the first phase, workers were interviewed to determine the needs that motivate them. In the second phase, a survey with 302 workers elicited four types of needs: job-related, career-related, organization-related, and familyrelated. Among these, family is a novel addition to the extant theories of work motivation in the West. The importance and presence of these four factors were all significantly correlated with employee engagement. Three models were tested to describe the importance and presence of needs as predictors of employee engagement. The best fitting model was the presence of needs as predictors of engagement. Among the needs, it was those related to the job that predicted employee engagement

Engaging the family in recovery: Outcomes of a community-based family intervention

The Katatagan Kontra Droga para sa Komunidad (KKDK) is a Filipino community-based drug recovery program that addresses individual and family issues. This study explores the changes in the family after the drug users completed the program. Surveys and interviews were used to evaluate changes in family support, quality of family life, and substance use disorder (SUD) symptoms. Results show participants perceived signifcant increase in family support and quality of family life, as well as decrease in SUD symptoms. Their family members also reported individual and familial changes in the participants as a result of the program. They showed remorse, became more responsible, and communicated better after going through the intervention. There was also an improvement in quality of family life, religious rituals, and time spent with the family. Implications on community-based drug recovery programs focusing on family changes are discussed