Dépendance physiologique et fonctionnement émotionnel chez les jeunes adultes : affectivité, intensité émotionnelle et alexithymie dans la consommation de substances psychoactives

Objectives

The objective of this study is to describe the emotional functioning of individuals addicted to psychoactive substances, and verify that the dependent subjects are more sensitive to emotional dimensions and variables considered as non-dependent subjects.

Patients and methods

We recruited 268 subjects students. They filled out a protocol, first, a questionnaire assessment measuring dependencies (tobacco, alcohol, cannabis), and a second part consisting of four questionnaires: the Hospital Anxiety Depression (HAD) scale (anxiety and depression), the Émotionalité Positive et Négative (EPN-31) (affectivity), the Affect Intensity Measure (AIM) (affect intensity), and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) (alexithymia). The 268 subjects were divided into: 69 subjects dependent (D) representing 25.7% of the sample, and 199 non-dependent (ND) subjects, representing 74.3%. It consisted of 224 women and 44 men, mean age was 22.23 years (standard deviation [S.D.]: 5.45, range: 18–56 years). There was no significant difference in gender (P > 0.05) between groups or in age (P < 0.05). The scores of anxiety and depression were significantly different between groups. We therefore conducted analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) including the total score of anxiety-depression as a covariate and as dependent variables, scores of emotions, emotional intensity and alexithymia with SPSS 11.5^®.

Results

The results show that dependent subjects have scores more important to the HAD than non-dependents, depression has been well regarded as a confounding factor. After controlling for this variable, they are more emotionally responsive, more sensitive to the emotional intensity, and alexithymia more than non-dependent. Activation and the emotional intensity appear to be dispositional variables may play a central role in emotional processing in the dependent subjects, associated with alexithymia. They could be located upstream of the processing of emotion, they would account for the gross apprehension felt by the subject, leading secondarily to the representation of emotion. The proportion of alexithymic subjects is 44.9% in this group of subjects, while only 13.6% among non-dependent subjects. They have greater difficulty in identifying emotions. This supports the idea of the existence of an emotional deficit in individuals addicted to psychoactive substances. This proportion is also larger than that found in general population.

Conclusions

The alexithymia seems to be a central variable emotional functioning dependent subjects, regardless of its relationship with depression, it could match the emotional processing mode preferred by the subjects dependent. Personality in this study seemed to reflect a vulnerability factor, which alexithymia represents a secondary dimension, even defensive. This could account for a mode of emotional regulation. The limitations of the study and possible openings will be discussed.