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Social Data and Personality Factors of Clinically Treated Young Drug Users
Author(s) -
Täschner KarlL.
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
british journal of addiction to alcohol and other drugs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.424
H-Index - 193
eISSN - 1360-0443
pISSN - 0007-0890
DOI - 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1974.tb01282.x
Subject(s) - personality , population , demography , drug , medicine , politics , psychology , psychiatry , social psychology , political science , sociology , law
Summary In view of the continuingly increasing number of young drug dependents requiring clinical treatment we studied 147 dependent in‐patients under 30 years. It was found that the sex distribution is furthermore approaching to the cross‐section of population compared to former studies at our clinic. A little less than 60 per cent of our group are polytoxikomans and using opiates; they are dominating. Secondly come the users of halluzinogens. Social attendant symptoms of drug use are evident in our group: more than 60 per cent are without own income, nearly half of the drug dependents are out of work resp. unemployed. It was also found that the social disintegration is increasing compared to former studies at our clinic. The low age of the patients is identified as important risk factor for the social encroachment. As the average age of the drug users is decreasing, further grave consequences in the social field are to be expected in future. More than one‐third of our patients had interrupted their course of education, only nearly one‐sixth achieved it. The risk in the course of education starts only after having achieved the elementary school. Conflicts of the patients are shown as consequences of a complicated or failed adaptation to the social realities. They appear to drug dependents, especially in the familiar–personal field, but also in the political and criminal fold. Three‐quarters of our patients are burdened with such conflicts. It is shortly pointed out to the methodical difficulties in registering personality dimensions. Our drug patients had primarily a small psychical but, on the contrary, a great physical capacity. They were primarily active and full of initiative, impulsive and tended to an uncontrolled way of behaviour. They had a great need of sociability and a good ability to contact. They chiefly were self‐unsecure and suffered from an unstable mood, had sensitive features, were pacific and little anxious. Their alcohol use was small, their nicotine use, on the contrary, high.