The investigation of the psychological symptom burden in young adults with substance use disorders

This research, which was aimed to investigate the psychological symptom burden in young adults with substance use disorder, was carried out mainly by correlational comparative survey model.41 individuals, between 20-32 years of age, with diagnosis of substance use disorder, matched with 37 healthy control subjects in terms of age, sex and education. The psychological symptom burden was determined by The Symptom Checklist (Scl 90-R). The possible impacts of some sociodemographic factors; like substance usage duration, domestic violence, running away from home, criminal behaviour and suicide attempts on psychological symptoms were investigated. The evaluation of the data gathered from all subjects were carried out by descriptive statistics, comparative analysis and correlation analysis. As a result, subjects with substance use, showed intense psychological symptoms. The cases with longer substance usage duration, had more intense psychological symptoms. In addition to these findings; a linear relationship was observed between suicide attempt rates and some subscores of Scl-90-R, such as interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety and paranoid thoughts. Substance use disorder, creates serious personal and social problems all through the world, and those patients have intense psychological distress. The increasing research in this area is of great importance, because the better recognition of the clinical picture, leads to more effective methods of treatment and rehabilitation.