An Evaluation of Personality Traits and Negative Life Events in Explaining Negative Coping Strategies among Drug Dependent People: The Mediating Role of Negative Affects

This study aimed to examine the relationship of personality traits and negative life events with coping styles with the mediating role of negative affects in drug dependent people. This was a correlational study wherein the number of 152 participants (drug users) completed Cloninger temperament and character inventory, Paykel life events inventory, positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS), and Endler & Parker’s coping inventory for stressful situations. Novelty seeking had an indirect effect on emotional coping styles. Although anger had a mediating role in this relationship, it did not play such a role in the relationship of low self-directedness and negative life events with emotional coping styles. Harm avoidance had a direct effect on avoidant coping styles. Fear and sadness played a mediating role in the structural relationship of harm avoidance and negative events with avoidant coping styles. Reward dependence had an indirect effect on avoidant coping styles. Sadness had a mediating role in the structural relationship between reward dependence and avoidant coping styles. People with traumatic personality traits show negative affects by experiencing stressful negative events which leads to traumatic coping style, including addiction.