Abstract
There is a high overlap between substance misuse and mental health disorders in adolescents. Certain personality traits (i.e., sensation seeking, impulsivity, hopelessness, and anxiety sensitivity) may be related to increased risk for mental health symptoms and/or substance misuse. The current study examined the relationships between personality and both substance use problems and externalizing and internalizing mental health symptoms in two clinical samples of adolescents. One sample consisted of adolescents receiving treatment for a primary mental health disorder, while the other sample included adolescents receiving treatment for a primary substance use disorder. A total of 116 participants (58 for each sample) completed the Substance Use Risk Profile Scale (SURPS), to examine personality factors, the Brief Child and Family Phone Interview- Self-Report, to examine mental health disorder symptoms, and the Personal Experience Screening Questionnaire, to examine substance use problems. After controlling for age, gender, and sample, sensation seeking and impulsivity were positively related to substance use problems, impulsivity was positively related to symptoms of externalizing disorders, and anxiety sensitivity and hopelessness were positively related to symptoms of internalizing disorders. These findings support the utility of the SURPS in predicting theoretically relevant symptoms in clinical samples of adolescents. Moreover, they extend previous research that has focused on using the SURPS as a predictor of substance misuse to its utility in also predicting mental health disorder symptoms. These findings have implications for improving mental health and addictions treatment services for adolescents.
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Notes
Information on socio-economic status, clinical diagnoses, and stage of treatment was not collected.
Ethnicity was not found to correlate with any study variable and therefore was not included as a demographic control variable in the regression analyses.
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Acknowledgments
Funding for this project was provided by an IWK Category A Grant and a Dalhousie Psychiatry Research Fund Grant. The first author is currently supported by a Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation Student Research Award. Both the first and third author were supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Scholarships, while the final author was supported by a Killam Research Professorship from the Dalhousie University Faculty of Science, at the time this research was conducted. The authors gratefully acknowledge Javad Alaghband-rad, Shannon Barnsley, Anne Brochu, Fiona Davidson, Sarah Doucette, Ann Marie Joyce, Christa Peters, and Lee Simpson for their help with this project.
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Battista, S.R., Pencer, A., McGonnell, M. et al. Relations of Personality to Substance Use Problems and Mental Health Disorder Symptoms in Two Clinical Samples of Adolescents. Int J Ment Health Addiction 11, 1–12 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-012-9395-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-012-9395-0