Previous Minnesota Multiphasio Personality Inventory (MMPI) studies of teenage drug users have focused principally on users of hard narcotics, mostly prisoners. Recent years have produced a new population of multidrug users, with the accent on marijuana, hallucinogens, amphetamines, and barbiturates. This study aims at describing some of the characteristics of this new population by means of the MMPI. The study employs three adolescent samples: 1) hospitalized drug users, 2) nonhospitalized drug users, and hospitalized non-drug users. Profiles of these three samples are similar in that they are all Sc-Pd profiles, suggesting a similar adolescent crisis characterized by confusion, isolation, and alienation. All these profiles differ from the characteristic Pd-Ma juvenile delinquent profiles of the teenage users of hard narcotics. The three male samples show important differences among themselves. The hospitalized drug users are significantly higher than the nonhospitalized ones on depression and paranoia. This is interpreted as being related to their life situation. The two hospitalized samples have almost identical profiles, but that of the drug users is significantly higher than the non-drug users. This is interpreted as reflecting similar adolescent conflicts and symptoms, which, however, in the case of the drug users, either are intensified by drug use or are more openly acknowledged. The three female samples, for reasons which are unclear, show only slight differentiation from one another. The comparison of the two male drug samples of our study with two comparable samples of nontreated drug users reported in the literature suggests a broad continuum of pathology associated with drug use, ranging in severity from our hospitalized sample, through the intermediate nonhospitalized sample, to the two nontreated samples, which at their end of the spectrum approach normality. The study concludes that, given this wide variety of intensity of pathology, drug treatment programs should be organized at several different levels, in the hope of preventing the pathology at any given level from becoming worse.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Burke et al. (1972) studied this question.