P21. ‘Limbic Irritability’ as a Prospective Predictive Risk Factor for Escalating Substance Abuse in Emerging Adults

Abstract

Efforts to understand the strong association between childhood adversity and substance use have focused on an array of symptomatic mediators. These include post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, dissociation and anger-hostility. We sought to assess the degree to which these symptoms, and symptoms of ‘limbic irritability’ could predicted escalating drug use in maltreated individuals. ‘Limbic irritability’ is characterized by intermittent abrupt episodes of sensory distortions or brief hallucinatory events, somatic disturbances, dissociative experiences and automatic behaviors, and is the symptom complex that we have found to be most strongly influenced by maltreatment.