The structure of psychopathic-like disorders in patients with opiate addiction
The authors have investigated 87 heroine addicts with the purpose to study personality changes in these patients. All of them were investigated in the hospital. Besides clinical psychopathological investigation, they filled out an inquiry form and had an experimental psychological investigation. It was found that 50% of patients had showed psychopathic character features before onset of their drug abuse and 50% developed psychopathic-like characteristics in the course of opiate abuse. The authors describe the groups with affective, behavioral, and affective-and-behavioral disorders and distinguish six most common psychopathological behavior forms. They present the results of investigation of patients' emotional, volitional and cognitive characteristics as well as their perception, memory and self-image. They conclude that changes in the "character of psychopathisation" should be taken into account in psychotherapy and rehabilitation measures.