The Link between Early Adolescent Alcohol Abuse and Adult Antisocial Behaviour: A Hypothesis Revisited

Richard C Howard

doi:10.15226/2374-6874/3/1/00128

Abstract

The Link between Early Adolescent Alcohol Abuse and Adult Antisocial Behaviour: A Hypothesis Revisited

Highlights

Some 10 years ago the author advanced the hypothesis that early-onset alcohol abuse might play a critical role in the aetiology of adult antisocial behaviour [1]
This hypothesis had its origins in a chance observation that an electrophysiological correlate of emotional impulsiveness, the Go/No Go contingent negative variation (CNV: Figure 1), showed a “high impulsive” pattern in those prison inmates who had a history of early-onset alcohol abuse, compared with inmates who lacked such a history [2]
Go/No Go CNV had previously been shown to reliably predict both general and violent reoffending in patients with personality disorder who had been discharged from high-secure care into

Summary

Introduction

Some 10 years ago the author advanced the hypothesis that early-onset alcohol abuse might play a critical role in the aetiology of adult antisocial behaviour [1]. In elaborating Howard’s model, Howard & Mc Murran [12]proposed that excessive use of alcohol, and binge drinking in particular, in young (roughly 13-15 year-old) adolescents resulted from an over-sensitive socio emotional system in a proportion of those diagnosed with CD, those showing “callous and unemotional” traits This early abuse of alcohol was said to impair and/or delay development of the cognitive control system (and its neural substrates in lateral prefrontal cortex) whose normal development proceeds in a slow and linear fashion during adolescence and continues into early adulthood. Higher than expected levels of alcohol use at any one time point were associated with higher than expected psychopathic features at subsequent time points This clearly, in accord with Howard’s hypothesis, implicates excessive alcohol use in adolescence as a causal risk factor in the development of adult psychopathic personality features.

Emotional impulsiveness is a core feature of severe personality disorder

An emotionally impulsive brain can be trained to be less impulsive

Some unresolved issues

Findings

Conclusion