Psychosocial profiles of college students: chemical and Behavioural addictions

Addiction behaviours, whether referring to psychoactive substances or others of a behavioural dependencies, constitute a public health problem to be addressed. This cross-sectional and comparative exploratory study aims to identify the psychosocial profile of college students in terms of chemical and behavioural addictions. This convenience sample consisted of 260 adult college students (32 male), aged between 18 and 51 years old. Life Events Checklist 5 (LEC-5), Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist 5 (PCL-5), Childhood History Questionnaire, Experiences in Close Relationships-Relationship Structures Scale (ECR-RS), Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRPS), Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), Alcohol, Smoking, and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST) and Internet Addiction Test (IAT), were used. Using the Mann-Whitney U test, significant differences were found between the low-level alcohol consumers group and moderate to high-level consumers group in aggressiveness, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and insecure attachment. Regarding Internet addiction, the results reveal differences in terms of aggressiveness, insecure attachment, and secondary psychopathy between subjects with normative use and subjects addicted to the Internet. When compared to subjects without addictions, subjects with addiction behaviours experience more adverse childhood experiences (ACE), more PTSD symptoms, higher levels of aggressiveness, greater avoidance and anxiety in affective relationships, and more predisposition to manifest deviant psychopathy behaviours. This study contributes to identifying different psychosocial profiles of college students concerning chemical and behavioural addictions and highlights the impact of those profiles on aggressiveness, PTSD, and insecure attachment, essential for the design of more effective prevention and intervention programs with these specific groups.