Personality Profiles of Individuals with Substance Use Disorders: Historical Overview and Current Directions

Efforts to understand personality features of people who use psychoactive substances have a long history, dating back to early psychoanalytic conceptualizations. Advancements in the field have focused on applying multidimensional personality inventories to better understand personality differences between substance users and non-users, and between different substance use types, with respect to both psychopathological traits and broad dimensional factors. A brief review of this evidence highlights personality features of persons with alcohol and other substance use problems and between users of different types of substances, especially alcohol and opioid substance use disorder patients. A better understanding of personality profiles of substance use disorder groups may be useful in tailoring treatment approaches based on profile characteristics.