Resilience was included in this study to assess whether social support was a buffer between schizoid personality traits and substance use. Strengths of youths with a criminal record were included in this study in order to shift the focus from risks and deficits of the youths toward maintaining the complexity of youth offending behaviors. Juveniles with a criminal history reported a number of strengths, especially in the domains of family support. This has implications for treatment interventions that would ideally leverage on those strengths and include families more regularly. The important role of family in treatment of adolescents has been demonstrated in effectiveness studies of interventions like the A-CRA . Yet, caution is warranted when formulating social support as a universal protective factor against substance problems. Social support as measured in this study by the number of different types of support was not found to be a protective factor against substance problems for individuals with schizoid personality traits. This could also imply that for individuals with schizoid traits social relationships and support are not as protective as are other, unstudied factors. It may be that for this personality type it is less about having access but more about how to access different support networks. These individuals may benefit from interventions that provide corrective emotional experiences of relatedness in a therapeutic setting lowering fear and distrust by the client in regard to his own needs. Since the measure did not specify the nature of the social support, it could be that youths who committed crimes seek support from peers who are gang members or involved in delinquent activities themselves. Also, cultural factors may have influenced participants’ responses to the social support measure so that for Latino males,growing indoor cannabis for instance, affirmative responses to having social support may reflect their value of loyalty but not necessarily the presence of networks that help lower their personal distress.

Social support is a multifaceted construct; it may be that it is a particular form of social support that is more effective than another for this population. Since the measure employed in the study grouped different types of social support together I was not able to test such a differential effect. The finding that schizoid personality traits had a negative relation with social support suggests that individuals with this personality type were, first of all, less likely to have different types of social support, and, second of all, may not benefit from treatment interventions emphasizing prosocial peer support in the same way other personality types do. This should be determined by future effectiveness studies that include personality type as a study variable. To my knowledge this study is one of the first empirical approaches to the developmental trajectory between trauma, schizoid personality, and antisocial behaviors, i.e., substance problems, among youths on probation. Even though the distinction resilience researchers draw between internal and external factors is helpful, it appears that risks like trauma and maladaptive personality traits carry both, internal and external implications for the individual simultaneously. For example, an individual high on schizoid traits is likely to experience interpersonal difficulties even though personality is an internal resilience factor. Similarly, when reviewing psychoanalytic concepts of object relations it becomes evident that a trauma history affects the individual on an internal and external level. In other words, a youth with a trauma history is more likely to experience internalizing disorders, such as depression and anxiety, and higher levels of mistrust and affect dysregulation which hinder interpersonal connections. As a result, the distinction between internal and external resilience factors is artificial when conceiving of the deeper-rooted processes involved. This study argues that its findings corroborate an alternate conceptualization of internal and external resilience factors not as distinct categories but as dualistic entities that represent both intra- and extrapsychic processes at once.

As expected, substance use was reported by a high proportion of youths. Over 80% had reported using AOD weekly or more often at some point in their lives, and 71% had received complaints from parents about their AOD use. While AOD use is normative during adolescence, a high number of youths in the sample reported experiencing problems related to their use. It was found that trauma had a detrimental effect on substance use behaviors in a youth offender’s life. Moreover, the study provided evidence for the relations between pasttrauma, schizoid personality traits, and substance problems, indicating the importance of context whereby for one individual using substances recreationally may be normative, and for another it may be maladaptive. For example, when using drugs is motivated by an attempt at coping with previous trauma, intervention would be indicated. Additionally, if substance use, even if infrequent, is causing interpersonal difficulties in the youth’s life, such as conflicts with family and friends, therapeutic intervention is recommended. marijuana daily to cope with feelings of loneliness and emotional disconnect, someone with impulsive personality traits may use cocaine for a thrill. Substance problems are an “equifinal” outcome which means that there are different trajectories from early trauma to later substance use.For example, anxiety sensitivity and introversion motivated cannabis use as a way for coping with sad emotions and to help with socializing . For individuals high on anxiety, cannabis was a means for an escape . Thus, substance use may look the same across individuals; however, it is likely to be motivated by different needs. Where one person uses cannabis to forget, another may use it to feel more alive. Unless research addresses the complexity of substance use behaviors in individuals with different personalities treatment efforts are likely to be generic and ineffective. When not correctly identified by clinicians and criminal justice personnel, individuals with schizoid personality traits may not have their treatment needs met. Hence, assessing for personality types is critical for treatment process and outcome because it allows for anticipating challenges and resistances. Moreover, the study showed that including personality as a factor when assessing youths who struggle with substance-related issues provides insight into their unique way of interacting with the world, which in turn has implications for treatment and recovery. Having a better understanding of the individual client will improve diagnostics and treatment planning.

Hopefully, this in turn will create long-term benefits for the client.Future research is needed to compare different personality types and their relationship to trauma and substance use. Are impulsive personalities more likely to benefit from social support as an intervention for substance use reduction? Since adolescence is a developmental construct that implies significant changes in personality and interpersonal behaviors, it will be important to consider grouping participants in different age clusters corresponding to early-, mid-, and late-adolescence or early adulthood, for example. Since social support did not mediate the relation between schizoid personality and substance problems,indoor cannabis growing research is needed to determine whether there are other protective factors that work for this specific personality type. Based on the characterological description of the schizoid personality type in the DSM-IV-TR, individuals on this personality dimension prefer solitary activities and have little interest in relationships . Thus, they may respond more favorably to interventions that suggest legal hobbies that do not involve large-group interactions. Females who engage in illegal activities have been underrepresented in the empirical literature and differ from males who offend . Future research should include female youths to explore their specific risk and protective factors and trajectories to antisocial behaviors. Likewise, differences of antisocial trajectories between ethnic or cultural groups should be examined. Research on ethnic identity and well being found that there is an association of ethnic regard, which is defined as the degree to which one perceives one’s ethnic group as positive, to overall happiness and lower anxiety levels . Research needs to be conducted on whether trajectories from trauma to antisocial behaviors differ for youths who hold their ethnicity in high regard. Another line of research that would add to the current understanding of substance use behaviors will be fulfilled through qualitative methods. Asking participants about what feelings they are trying to either avoid or have when using can provide critical nuances for understanding substance use. Learning about the motivation behind using is critical for developing healthier alternatives for those youths. Similarly, research is needed to help learn about the specific patterns of use related to cannabis versus other drugs. A lot of the research on drug use and treatment is based on adults using alcohol, heroin, or cocaine; current approaches would benefit from specific research efforts on youths and their cannabis use . Analyzing whether trajectories differ by drug type across personality types will help adapt substance abuse interventions and foster greater flexibility in treatment. Additionally, qualitative approaches will be able to access the nature of different types of support, what kinds of needs they fulfill, and what they mean to the individual. Previous research found teachers to provide informational support, whereas peers provided informational and emotional support . Semi-structured interviews will be able to address whether a caregiver or family member is fulfilling a different need than a gang member. Is the former addressing a practical or informational need, and the latter an emotional one during adolescence? What needs do different types of support fulfill? What needs are there that may not yet have been assessed or studied? And what differential effects do different types of support have on rehabilitation for youths on probation? This study has several limitations. First, I did not control for some potentially confounding variables.

Indeed, genetic predispositions and the presence of neighborhood and domestic violence have been linked to trauma and the development of antisocial behaviors , so that statistical conclusion validity may have been compromised. Moreover, the trauma measure did not exclude recent traumatic experiences that occurred during adolescence. If traumatic experiences occurred close to when measured in the adolescent sample they were unlikely to have shaped personality traits. Another limitation refers to the measure of schizoid personality that did not prevent nonschizoid traits from being included. For example, the CPI measure consisted of traits that are shared with paranoid, antisocial, and borderline personality types potentially limiting statistical conclusion validity. However, the idea of shared traits across different categorizations of personality is state-of-the art in current personality research, and has informed revisions of diagnostic instruments like the DSM-V . Therefore, dimensional constructs of personality may provide a more accurate representation of personality, so that the CPI measure, by being inclusive of overlapping traits across categories, may have been an enhancement of construct validity instead of a detriment. Because all measures relied on self-report increasing mono-method bias, a potential threat for construct validity exists. In futures studies parental or friend reports on youths may help alleviate this problem. Potentially, observational data on interpersonal behaviors can augment creation of personality profiles in the future. This study did not implement an experimental design that manipulates the independent variable, which may have compromised internal validity . Similarly, participants were not sampled randomly but were part of a youth offender reentry grant. This makes it likely that the participants shared some preexisting differences causing selection bias. Therefore, findings should not be generalized to youths in the community who were not arrested for illegal behaviors and do not share some of the main characteristics of the sample. Another limitation is due to the lack of covariates in the study. In order to best recreate the complexity of individual AOD users, it would be helpful to account for concurrent existing levels of depression and anxiety, for example. Finally, since the social support variable measured different types of social support that could include talking with a peer while high on drugs, it may have confounded prosocial aspects of support with antisocial ones. This would have had an impact on the validity of that measure for assessing positive social support. Moreover, since the measure captured quantity and not quality of social supports, I was unable to differentiate effects between different peer and adult support, for example. The design and engineering for the project is funded; however, the construction will require additional funding. More amenity-based planning for and implementation of active transportation infrastructure is ongoing in a handful of cities. San Leandro is looking into street scaping and bicycle work in industrial areas “to support place making and next generation work places.” South San Francisco is working on improving the Bay trail in Oyster Point; Hayward staff also emphasized connections on the Bay Trail.