Young girls who face motherhood in the context of drug-addiction. Which characteristics in terms of personality, cognition and alexithymia?

Introduction: Substance use disorders (SUD) are associated with several bio-psycho-social risk factors, which become even more worrisome if they intertwine with other two conditions of vulnerability: youth and motherhood. Young drug-addicted girls are at great risk for unintended pregnancy and in many cases they continue to use substances during the prenatal and postnatal age. SUDs encompass a number of impairments in terms of dual diagnosis, cognitive deficits and alexithymia, which contribute to the development and the maintenance of the disorder and they interfere with its treatment too. Nevertheless, little research has explored these domains in young drug-addicted girls, and even less in groups of addicted mothers in their early adulthood. AIMS Within the general purpose of investigating risk factors associated with parenting, the present study intends to explore potential characteristics of young drug-addicted mothers in the domains of cognition, personality and alexithymia. Material and methods: 2 groups of young girls (aged 18-25), admitted to a therapeutic community program, were involved: 10 drug-addicted non-mothers and 10 drug-addicted mothers. Personality was assessed with the q-sort Schedler Westen Assessment Procedure-II (Schedler, et al., 2014), neuropsychological functioning with the protocol Esame Neuropsicologico Breve-2 (Mondini, et al., 2011) and alexithymia with the self-report Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 item (Bressi, et al., 1996). Results: Both drug-addicted mothers and non-mothers reported high rates of personality disorders (70-80% respectively), impaired global cognitive profile (40%) and alexithymia (20-60%). Non-parametric statistics revealed significant differences in paranoid and hostile personality traits, with mothers showing higher levels of dysfunctional traits. On the other hand, non-mothers reported more alexithymic difficulties, namely identifying their own inner states, and slightly more memory impairments. Conclusions: Given the presence of notable impairments in young mothers with SUDs, further studies should investigate whether and how these problematic features might adversely affect parenting and early mother-child interaction.