A Comparative Study of Women With Substance Use Disorder With and Without Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: Complex Interaction Between Childhood Trauma, Empathy, Personality Traits, and Substance Use Severity.

Abstract

Substance use disorders (SUDs) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) significantly coexist; thus, identifying potential related factors of both illnesses is important for advancing the prevention strategies. The goals of this study were to compare women with SUD with and without PTSD in terms of potentially related variables and to investigate if those factors are associated with SUD severity. Ninety-five participants (women) with SUD who had been admitted to the outpatient treatment clinic in Turkey were assessed with borderline personality questionnaire, childhood trauma questionnaire, addiction profile index, Levenson self-report psychopathy questionnaire, and basic empathy scale. Participants with PTSD had significantly higher severity of addiction, childhood trauma, borderline personality traits, secondary psychopathy scores, and affective empathy scores than participants without PTSD (P = .013, P = .012, P = .008, P = .031, P = .040). Our study suggested that comorbid PTSD and SUD resulted in more complicated presentation. It seems to be crucial for practitioners to screen PTSD symptoms in women with severe SUD and complicated clinical presentations.