Over the past ten years there has been a dramatic
increase in the number of drug addicted teens in this
country. Accompanying this increase in drug usage of
adolescents has been an rise in the number of treatment and
evaluation centers to serve the adolescent drug abusing
population. Comprehensive and individualized assessment of
drug addicted teens is needed as the basis for adolescent
treatment programs. Many adolescent drug treatment programs
have relied primarily on in-house, informal questionnaires
to assess personality traits. There is a need for more
objective measures to assess personality traits in
adolescent drug addicted populations.
This study used information from intake interviews of
842 inpatient adolescents and examined the amount of drug
use in relationship to; personality, negative life events
(number of times arrested for drugs, number of times runaway
from home, number of suicide attempts, and
substance abuse) and gender.
Personality was assessed using the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). This study
family history of
decreased the complexity of interpreting MMPI results by
reducing the scores to categories reflective of two common
personality traits found in drug addicted populations -
introversion and extroversion. Codetypes, which reflect the
subjects two most heightened clinical MMPI scales, were also
utilized in this study.
In this investigation personality traits of
introversion and extroversion were not found to be related
to amount of drug use, or gender. A heightened scale 4
(Psychopathic Deviate) was consistently found in this sample
of adolescent drug abusers. Gender differences were found
in membership in codetype group and in terms of total amount
of drug use. Females who reported a maternal family history
of substance abuse were more likely to use greater amounts
of drugs than males with either a maternal or paternal
family history of substance abuse. Negative life events
were found to differ by gender with females having higher
rates of suicide attempts than males, and males having
greater number of drug arrests than females.
A thorough assessment of maternal drug history for drug
addicted females, and treatment modalities focused on
personality types who score high on MMPI scale 4, may be
important issues to be considered in residential treatment
of drug addicted adolescents. / Graduation date: 1993
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/37195 |
| Date | 25 August 1992 |
| Creators | Toray, Tamina |
| Contributors | Vuchinich, Samuel |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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