Personality disorders in alcoholics and drug addicts.

This report examines the prevalence of personality disorders among hospitalized alcoholics and polydrug addicts and the extent and nature of the overlap between different axis II disorders. Subjects were 178 alcoholics admitted to a diagnostic unit of an addiction treatment institute and 86 polydrug addicts admitted to the therapeutic community of the same institute. Substance abuse was diagnosed according to DSM-III-R, and patients were assessed with the Structured Interview for DSM-III Personality Disorders (SIDP). In the alcohol group, 78% of the patients had at least one personality disorder and the average number of personality disorders was 1.8 per patient. In the polydrug group, 91% of the patients met criteria for at least one personality disorder and the average number of personality disorders was 4.0 per patient. No single "addictive personality" emerged. These findings raise questions about the validity and usefulness of the distinction between axis I and axis II disorders in patients with substance use disorders, and do not lend support to the validity of the categorical classification of personality pathology.

Memories of parental rearing in alcohol and drug addicts: a comparative study.

Memories of parental rearing were investigated in 48 polydrug addicts and 91 alcohol addicts with the EMBU, an instrument for assessing parental rearing styles. Drug addicts remember their fathers and mothers as more rejecting and overprotecting and their mothers as more favoring than do alcoholics. When the age and the sex of addicts are taken into account, the kind of addiction and the sex of the addicts can explain a part of the variance of the overprotection dimension by fathers and mothers. The age of the addicts can explain a part of the variance of the rejection dimension by fathers and mothers. Finally, the variance in the favoring dimension by mothers can be explained by the kind of addiction.