Five-Factor Model Personality Profiles: The Differences between Alcohol and Opiate Addiction among Females

The prevalence of female alcohol and substance abusers has markedly increased. The main objective of this research was to explore personality profiles among females who had alcohol and opiate dependence.

The aim of the study is to analyse if there is differences in personality profiles of females addicted to alcohol and opiates. We hypothesized that there might be significant differences in personality profiles among subgroups of women who present with alcohol and opiate use disorders.

Of 157 consecutive women with diagnosis of alcohol/opiate addiction, 62 fulfilled following inclusion criteria: age 19-45 years, abstinence from alcohol and opiates for at least 10 days prior to enrollment. Alcohol-dependent group consisted of 30 females, while opiate-dependent group consisted of 32 females. The control group involved 30 age-matched randomly chosen healthy women. The data were collected using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). The multiple stepwise discriminant analysis was used to determine relations between personality traits and the probability of belonging to one of the study groups.

Significant differences in the NEO-PI-R scores were observed between groups for all main personality traits except for Openness to Experience. Compared with controls, substance-dependent women scored significantly higher on Neuroticism and lower on Conscientiousness. Opiate-dependent females scored the highest on Neuroticism and on Extraversion and lowest on Agreeableness and on Conscientiousness. Alcohol-dependent females scored higher on Conscientiousness and lower on Neuroticism compared to opiate-dependent women.

The results of our study confirmed significant characteristics in personality profiles among females with alcohol and opiate dependence, as well as the difference between these two groups of substance abusers and their healthy controls. The distinct personality characteristics among different groups of substance addicted women should be taken into account when creating the most effective program of prevention and therapeutic approaches in this specific cohort.