Levels of personality organization and psychopathology among drug abusers in Sweden.
In a case-finding sample of 1,824 drug abusers in the greater Stockholm area, personality organization (PO), according to Kernberg's theory, was assessed by using a standardized questionnaire, with the clients' contact persons as informants. Twenty percent of the sample were diagnosed as psychotic PO (PPO), 40% had a clear borderline PO (BPO), and 40% a high BPO or a neurotic PO (NPO). This distribution agreed closely with that found in a comparison sample of social service clients. However, in the NPO and BPO groups, the mean scores were higher for the social service clients than for the abusers. A clustering into nine sub-clusters revealed interesting differences within each PO.
Sandell
R
R
Stockholm University, Sweden.
Bertling
U
U
D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000150:complications; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009497:Neurotic Disorders / Q000150:complications*; D010551:Personality; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000150:complications*; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000150:complications*; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D013548:Sweden / Q000453:epidemiology