Personality Characteristics of Urban and Suburban Heroin Abusers: More Data and another Reply to Sutker and Allain (1973)

Abstract

Sutker and Allain (1973) suggest that nonincarcerated heroin addicts who are involved in the “street life style” would tend to obtain elevated scores on the Hs, D, Hy and Pd scales of the MMPI. If these findings were cross-validated, then personality descriptions of addicts would have to be modified accordingly. Also, improvement measured by decreases on the Hs and Hy scales soon after entering a drug-free environment may be a result of milieu differences rather than personality change. Four groups of heroin addicts, two hospitalized, urban drug abusers who were free of drug influence at testing (Hospitalized1 and Hospitalized2) were compared with two street addict samples, one from an urban (StreetNARA), the other a suburban (StreetSCNCC) environment. It was hypothesized that both the StreetNARA and StreetSCNCC groups would score significantly higher than the hospitalized groups and that there would be no differences between the hospitalized groups. As was expected, the street samples scored statistically higher on the Hs and Hy scales. However, data for the D and Pd scales failed to cross-validate the Sutker-Allain hypothesis. These data suggest that personality characteristics play a more dominant role in MMPI score elevations than the “street life style.” This contention was also supported by test-retest data on the Hospitalized2 sample measuring the effect of 90 days of hospitalization in a drug-free environment.

A test of the voluntarism hypothesis among nonvolunteering opiate addicts who voluntarily return to treatment.

“…These results met predictions from studies of Berzins et al (1971), Gendreau and Gendreau (1973), Sheppard et al (1973), and Penk and Robinowitz (1976). Findings based on experimental designs indicate that voluntarism is more important than Sutker regarded it in 1974 and than Sutker, Archer, and Allain found in 1979, using preexperimental designs.…”

“…pard, Ricca, Fracchia, & Merlis, 1973). Accordingly, better controlled studies are needed to test the voluntarism hypothesis, which holds that the effects of volunteering increase the degree of self-reported psychopathology on the MMPI.…”

Personality differences of volunteer and nonvolunteer heroin and nonheroin drug users.

“…Finally, the strategy affords implicit control over potentially confounding characteristics that have varied in other studies, such as education, socioeconomic level, and intellectual efficiency (cf. Sheppard et al, 1973).…”

“…Sutker's explanation, however, did not reconcile Sutker and Allain's (1973) earlier finding in which incarcerated street addicits (55% of whom Sutker, 1974, classified as volunteers) obtained significantly higher profiles than incarcerated addicts (cf. Sheppard et al 1973).…”

Heroin addiction and the Wechsler digit span test

“…Detachment and lack of commitment to persons or programs, even optimum therapy programs, is characteristic of addicts (Biase, 1972;DeLeon, Holland, & Rosenthal, 1972). A high incidence of characterological problems among heroin addicts has been well documented (Berzins, Ross, & Monroe, 1971 ;Sheppard, Ricca, Fracchia, & Merlis, 1973;Sutker, 1971 ; Zuckerrnan, Sola, Masterson, & Angelone, 1975).…”