# Affective Factors in the Co-Occurrence of Personality Disorders and Substance Use Disorders

## TL;DR

This paper explores how emotional factors link personality and substance use disorders, suggesting they could help explain causes and treatments.

## Contribution

The paper highlights affective processes as transdiagnostic mechanisms and advocates for dimensional models of personality disorders.

## Key findings

- Affective factors are key in understanding the overlap between personality and substance use disorders.
- Dimensional models of personality disorders are more effective than categorical ones.
- Ecological momentary assessment helps identify real-time risk pathways for substance use.

## Abstract

Personality disorders (PDs) and substance use disorders (SUDs) co-occur at high rates. Transdiagnostic mechanisms such as affective processes could improve our understanding of etiology, maintenance, and treatment of co-occurring disorders. We review the role that affective factors play in the overlap between PDs and SUDs and focus on current directions in assessment and evaluation of affective processes.

Recent affect-related work informing PD and SUD co-occurrence has focused on conceptualizing PDs dimensionally, testing affective processes as transdiagnostic constructs, issues in affect measurement, using ecological momentary assessment to identify proximal risk pathways, and debate on the role of affect in SUD.

Affective changes can be reliably measured in daily life, and evidence supports using dimensional models of PDs compared to categorical diagnoses. Future work should build on these strengths and focus on careful translations of SUD theories to research.