Being women in relationship with men who experience illness due to the use of alcohol: integrative review

Abstract The aim is to investigate how women are affected by marital life with people sickened by alcohol use. Integrative review, carried out between February and April 2024, in the databases: LILACS, SciELO, Google Scholar, PubMed, PsyINFO, Web of Science, Scopus and ScienceDirect. The inclusion criteria were complete, available articles, published from 2001 to 2024, with a target population of non-alcoholic women in a relationship with a person sickened by alcohol use, and the outcome analyzed was the effects of this coexistence on women. The exclusion criteria were studies with marital relationships in which only women suffered from illness due to alcohol use, outcomes related to the marital relationship itself, the family and/or other family members, and/or women with other degrees of relationship, and master’s and/or doctoral dissertations. Twenty-seven articles were selected for this study. They were organized into two thematic categories: 1) Life experiences of wives of men sickened by alcohol use, 2) Women and the repercussions on mental and physical health. Women in marital relationships with men sickened by alcohol are exposed to suffering, violence, and an increased risk of developing mental and physical problems.