the assessment of self-esteemin addicted women

Background: selfe steem is the level of respect which an individual pays to himself and his identity. having healthy self esteem is a fundamental need for human beings and lack of it may have some consequences. objectives: the aim of this study was to determine and compare the level of self esteem among female addicts with normal control group. patients and methods: the study is an analytical cross sectional study. the present study was conducted on three groups: imprisoned addicted women, addicted women in the society visiting welfare associations who did not have a background of imprison ment, and a control group including nonaddicts who did not have the records of imprisonment and visiting health care centers to receive consultation services. validated persian version of the rosenbergs self esteem scale was used in this study. the chisquare test, anova and kruskal wallis tests were used. results: the mean age of participants was not statistically different in three groups (p = 0.75) but the other variables (i.e. level of education, job, location of living, andmarital status) show significant statistical difference (p = 0.001).the mean score of self esteem in the group of imprisoned addicts, addicts and control groups were respectively 14.87 4.70, 15.16 4.71, and 22.90 5.06. the mean score in the control group is significantly higher than addict group (chisquare = 74.97, p < 0.001). conclusions: lower level of self steem should be considered as an important factor for tendency for drug abuse.