Specificity of personality relationships to particular forms of concurrent substance use among methadone maintenance therapy clients.

OBJECTIVE: A mainstay treatment for opioid addiction in North America is methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) - a form of opiate agonist therapy (OAT). While efficacious for treating opioid addiction, MMT fails to address the concurrent polysubstance use that is common among opioid dependent clients. Moreover, psychosocial approaches for addressing polysubstance use during MMT are lacking. Our study's goals were to validate the use of the four-factor personality model of substance use vulnerability in MMT clients, and to demonstrate theoretically-relevant relationships of personality to concurrent substance use while receiving MMT. METHOD: Respondents included 138 daily-witnessed MMT clients (65.9% male, 79.7% Caucasian), mean age (SD) 40.18 (11.56), recruited across four Canadian MMT clinics. Bayesian confirmatory factor analysis was used to establish the structural validity of the four-factor personality model of substance use vulnerability (operationalized with the Substance Use Risk Profile Scale [SURPS]) in MMT clients. SURPS personality scores were then used as predictors for specific forms of recent (past 30-day) substance use. RESULTS: Using a latent hierarchal model, hopelessness was associated with recent opioid use; anxiety sensitivity with recent tranquilizer use; and sensation seeking with recent alcohol, cannabis, and stimulant use. CONCLUSION: Personality is associated with substance use patterns and may be an appropriate target for intervention for those undergoing MMT to reduce opioid use, and potentially dangerous concurrent use of other drugs, while receiving methadone.

Personality and prescription drug use/misuse among first year undergraduates.

Emerging adults (18-25 year olds) endorse the highest rates of prescription drug misuse. Attending college or university may confer additional risk. Previous research suggests that personality is an important predictor of many addictive behaviours. Four traits have been consistently implicated: anxiety sensitivity, hopelessness, sensation seeking, and impulsivity. Published studies on personality as a predictor of prescription drug abuse are limited, however, by a primary focus on overall prescription drug use, inconsistent operationalisation of misuse, and failure to control for alcohol use. Sample sizes have been small and non-specific. We sought to better understand how personality predicted the overall use, the medically-sanctioned use, and the misuse of prescription sedatives/tranquilizers, opioids, and stimulants. A large (N = 1755) sample of first year Canadian undergraduate students (mean age = 18.6 years; 68.9% female) was used. We predicted that: anxiety sensitivity would be related to sedatives/tranquilizers, hopelessness to opioids, sensation seeking to stimulants, and impulsivity to all three. Save for the impulsivity to opioid use path, predictions were fully supported in our "any use" model. For medically-sanctioned use: anxiety sensitivity predicted sedative/tranquilizers, hopelessness predicted opioids, and impulsivity predicted stimulants. For misuse: anxiety sensitivity (marginally) predicted sedatives/tranquilizers, sensation seeking predicted stimulants, and impulsivity predicted all three. Our models support using personality-matched interventions. Specifically, results suggest targeting anxiety sensitivity for sedative/tranquilizer misuse, sensation seeking for stimulant misuse, and impulsivity for unconstrained prescription drug misuse. Interventions with early coping skills that pertain to all four traits might be useful for preventing prescription drug uptake and later misuse.

Neurotic Personality Traits and Risk for Adverse Alcohol Outcomes: Chained Mediation through Emotional Disorder Symptoms and Drinking to Cope.

BACKGROUND: Rates of alcohol abuse are high on Canadian postsecondary campuses. Individual trait differences have been linked to indices of alcohol use/misuse, including neurotic traits like anxiety sensitivity (AS) and hopelessness (HOP). We know little, though, about how these traits confer vulnerability. AS and HOP are related to anxiety and depression, respectively, and to drinking to cope with symptoms of those disorders. Neurotic personality may therefore increase risk of alcohol use/abuse via (1) emotional disorder symptoms and/or (2) coping drinking motives. OBJECTIVES: Allan and colleagues (2014) found chained mediation through AS-generalized anxiety-coping motives-alcohol problems and AS-depression-coping motives-alcohol problems. We sought to expand their research by investigating how emotional disorder symptoms (anxiety, depression) and specific coping motives (drinking to cope with anxiety, depression) may sequentially mediate the AS/HOP-to-hazardous alcohol use/drinking harms relationships among university students. METHODS: This study used cross-sectional data collected in Fall 2014 as part of the Movember-funded Caring Campus Project (N = 1,883). The survey included the SURPS, adapted DMQ-R SF, and AUDIT-3. RESULTS: AS and HOP were both related to hazardous alcohol and drinking harms via emotional disorder symptoms and, in turn, coping drinking motives. All indirect pathways incorporating both mediators were statistically significant, and additional evidence of partial specificity was found. Conclusions/Importance: The study's results have important implications for personality-matched interventions for addictive disorders.