Correlation between traits of psychopathy and drug abuse in a sample of brazilian teenagers in conflict with the law

Abstract

Drug use can be considered a facilitator, or even a violent and criminal actions motivator. Drugs can be stimulus, reasons, answers, or mediator of behaviours. In this study, we performed an assessment of psychopathic traits of juvenile delinquents by using the Hare Psychopathy inventory: Youth Version (PCL: YV) and we related the scores obtained with socio demographic data, substance use and criminal history. For data analysis the statistical package SPSS 11.0 was used. The comparisons of the averages of the scores obtained in the PCL: YV and socio-demographic variables and the use of substances were made with Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Pearson Correlation, dispersion diagrams, and T-test. The results indicate that the higher consumption of substances as to frequency, diversity of substances and age of onset are related to violence and psychopathic personality disorder traits.