| Abstract: | Research on the relation between personality and the etiology of alcohol and drug abuse has revealed a single consistent finding: a correlation between antisocial behavior in childhood and adolescence and alcoholism in adulthood. It is antisocial behavior, however, and not antisocial personality, that most observers identify as a precursor of alcoholism. Unfortunately, the high rates of antisocial behavior in our society render it an inefficient predictor of alcohol and drug abuse. Research on the link between personality and the course of alcohol and drug abuse has suggested that substantial numbers of abusers meet Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria for antisocial personality disorder and that depression also frequently accompanies alcohol and drug dependence. No personality factors and no other behaviors have reliably differentiated abusers from others: Antisocial behavior and depression are behaviors that are symptomatic, respectively, of disregard for society's rules and of clinical dysphoria. Moreover, the depressed behavior of alcoholics appears largely to be consequent rather than antecedent to their alcoholism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
