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This paper considers some recently reported cigarette smoking and drug-use data which indicate teenage smokers have a greater probability of using or becoming involved with illicit drugs than non-smoking peers. It is suggested that the epidemiological concept of high risk groupsbe applied to relationship between the use of socially approved substances like tobacco by young people and subsequent drug experiences because it acknowledges the empirical covariance between these events but does not have as strong causal implications as a “stepping stone” notion. By this, it is implied that a person who begins smoking, for example, at age 10 when his reference group will begin at age 15, may be more likely to become involved with substance abuse. Further suggested the decision to use drugs is an individual one which appears to be influenced by a multiplicity of factors as availability, personal needs, values, peer influences, personality characteristics and previous behavioral tendencies.

The adjectives most strongly attributed to the concept of ex-mental patient by a sample of 30 male and female suburbanites were excitable, strange, tense, strong, uncertain, unsure, unpredictable, convincing, active, and mysterious. In addition, an r of .74 was found between dangerous and unpredictable. These findings may suggest that although the public stereotype of mental patients has undergone positive change since 1960, ex-mental patients still tend to be perceived as potential threat-bearers to the community. Unfounded fears based upon this perception may motivate resistances to community-based treatment programs for this group.

Hypothesizing that a relationship exists between personality and occupational choice, the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule was employed to assess need differences for a sample of 33 metropolitan police officers, Edwards' adult male, and male college normative groups. Comparison with the adult male population indicates this police sample score higher on needs for achievement, exhibitionism, and heterosexuality. They score lower on needs for abasement, affiliation, deference, endurance, nurturance, and order. Comparisons with the male college normative population show this sample of police personnel differs in having a lower affiliation need. A discussion of these findings with those of two previous studies was undertaken. The common findings of the three studies suggest that compared to the male general population, police officers have higher needs for exhibitionism and heterosexuality and a lower need for affiliation. Further studies are necessary for clarification.

Among the 15 variables assessed by the EPPS for 59 male and female applicants to a suburban methadone maintenance program the pattern, direction and magnitudes of correlations between need states were significantly different from those of the normative sample. The implications of the tendency of addicts to associate positively a number of incompatible needs for: (1) counseling, (2) generating interpersonal conflict, and (3) understanding the addict as an individual were discussed.

To gain further understanding of psychiatrists' prescription preferences, samples of native and foreign psychiatrists specializing in chemotherapeutic treatment were presented with a standard case of a male experiencing an acute psychotic episode for whom they were asked to develop a treatment program. The current paper considers the degree of concordance in chemotherapeutic preferences. These data have shown little consensus. No “Tower of Babel” exists among these specialists regarding ratings of symptom severity or hierarchy of symptom importance. Upon moving to the next level of abstraction, the foreign psychiatrists considered schizo-affective and undifferentiated schizophrenia significantly more frequently than native psychiatrists. Neither a symptom hierarchy nor diagnostic approach accounted for the variance observed in these drug preferences.

The relationship between authoritarian attitudes, which reflect the belief that mentally ill persons comprise an inferior class requiring coercive handling, and personal adjustment was examined for 77 female psychiatric aides at a large state mental hospital. Correlations and analysis of variance suggested the lack of a systematic association between the two variables.

The Ravens Progressive Matrices (RPM), a test of intellectual ability, was administered to 396 male narcotic users. Norms are given, and concepts basic to the validity and reliability of the RPM tested. Significant shifts were found in item order in sets A, B, C, and D. Differences were not considered crucial for each set, which was progressively more difficult than the preceding set; thus the total structure of the test was supported by the sample. The discriminative power of most items ranged from good to excellent. In investigating properties of distractors, answer four was chosen significantly more often than other alternatives as the wrong answer in sets C, D and E identifying the possible operation of a positional distractor. Test-retest reliability, content and concurrent validity coefficients were of the order of .8. Correlation of formal education with RPM was of the order of .2. Previously available normative data on patient samples ae extended and use of the RPM as a measure of intellectual performance relatively free from language and cultural bias is supported.

In an attempt to identify the existence of reasoning errors in psychiatric patients, the performance of male narcotic users defined as sociopathic (N= 36) and schizotypic (N= 34) by MMPI profile patterns was analyzed for avoidable errors on the Ravens Progressive Matrices (RPM). An avoidable error was defined as a failure to solve an item whose difficulty level was within the testee's range of ability as measured by his performance. Construct validity was defined in terms of the intercorrelations of Ravens centile and item difficulty levels. Parametric and non-parametric tests of significance indicated that the schizotypic group commit significantly more identifiable reasoning errors than the sociopathic group.

Sutker and Allain (1973) suggest that nonincarcerated heroin addicts who are involved in the “street life style” would tend to obtain elevated scores on the Hs, D, Hyand Pdscales of the MMPI. If these findings were cross-validated, then personality descriptions of addicts would have to be modified accordingly. Also, improvement measured by decreases on the Hsand Hyscales soon after entering a drug-free environment may be a result of milieu differences rather than personality change. Four groups of heroin addicts, two hospitalized, urban drug abusers who were free of drug influence at testing (Hospitalized1and Hospitalized2) were compared with two street addict samples, one from an urban (StreetNARA), the other a suburban (StreetSCNCC) environment. It was hypothesized that both the StreetNARAand StreetSCNCCgroups would score significantly higher than the hospitalized groups and that there would be no differences between the hospitalized groups. As was expected, the street samples scored statistically higher on the Hsand Hyscales. However, data for the Dand Pdscales failed to cross-validate the Sutker-Allain hypothesis. These data suggest that personality characteristics play a more dominant role in MMPI score elevations than the “street life style.” This contention was also supported by test-retest data on the Hospitalized2sample measuring the effect of 90 days of hospitalization in a drug-free environment.

The MMPI was completed by 74 applicants to a Suffolk County methadone maintenance program. All had measurable psychopathology as reflected in Tscores of 70 or above on one or more of the original clinical scales. Data demonstrated heterogeneity in MMPI protocol code types, character structure, and psychopathological indications. Comparisons with previously reported data for addict samples committed to federal and state treatment units indicates fewer neurotic and sociopathic, but more schizotypic, incipient schizophrenic, or schizophrenic personality types applying to the methadone maintenance clinic. The most prevalent code type seen (842'), however, was identical with that reported for a sample of 117 patients seen at a VA methadone maintenance clinic.

The possibility of defining an emotion profile consistent with personality type was examined in this cross-validational study. The procedure contrasted a sample of newly admitted acute paranoid schizophrenic patients, who were identified by clinical procedures and judgment, with a group of narcotic users who were defined as paranoid personality types on the basis of their responses to self-report inventories. When the resulting Emotions Profile Index scores were compared for these two groups, they showed high similarity. This suggests the possibility of identifying emotion profile types which are consistent with underlying personality types.

The Raven Progressive Matrices protocols of 88 narcotic addicts, divided into four MMPI profile pattern groups, were scored for avoidable errors. Ss having psychotic-like profiles (428′ and 987′) made significantly more avoidable reasoning errors than Ss with sociopathic patterns (42′ and 49′). These data were interpreted as evidence of the sensitivity of avoidable error measures to disturbances in consistency and accuracy of comparative and analogical reasoning performance. It was suggested that avoidable error indices might be used to (a) judge the effects of pathological ideation upon complex reasoning, (b) estimate potential level of intellectual functioning in clinical populations, and (c) serve as a criterion for treatment efficacies.

Narcotic addicts comprising 2 diagnostic groups as defined by MMPI profile types (49′ sociopathic and 468′ paranoid) were selected to test the validity of emotion profiles gleaned from affective differential ratings, the affective differential methodology and the assumption that patients with different character structures have measurable differences in emotion profiles. Comparisons were made between the patient groups and between profiles gleaned from clinicians' ratings and the patients' self-reports. Emotion profile differences were demonstrated between paranoid and sociopathic patient groups. The clinicians' ratings tended to exaggerate the intensity of the emotions, making differences between profile types greater than those differences observed from patient self-reports. The results supported the hypothesis that persons with different character structures have different emotion profiles but not to the degree first reported by clinicians.