Abstract
This research clarifies the process by which medical and welfare staff who engage in the treatment of alcohol dependency cope with their own negative emotions and acquire a sense that alcohol dependency treatment is worthwhile. A semi-structured interview was conducted with 13 people; 4 categories and 16 concepts were derived from the analyses conducted using the M-GTA. Initially, these staff members expressed possessing a "sense of helplessness and anger about unreasonable demands." However, as they undertook initiatives to understand their subjects, they began to emotionally understand the experiential world of the people they were treating that was earlier based on merely an intellectual understanding of the condition of dependency. Thus, a "deepening of their understanding of the conditions of this illness" occurred. Their understanding was an outcome of the personal experiences with the people they were treating; this enabled them to positively cope with negative emotions and connect to the "practice of a medical treatment approach" focusing on rehabilitation. As these staff members developed these connections, they engaged with patients recovering from dependency and eventually began feeling that "treating people with alcohol dependency is worth doing and makes them happy." It was suggested that coping with negative emotions requires establishing an organizational support system. This necessitated a well-balanced understanding wherein background information can be linked to the symptoms that are the biggest challenges and cause for this coping process.
