Family Maladjustment and Narcissistic Personality Traits as Predictors of Methamphetamine Use Severity: Mediating Role of Craving and Moderating Role of Social Isolation

Abstract

Methamphetamine use disorder has come to be an ever-growing public health problem because of its significant psychological, behavioral and social effects, especially in young adults. The present study focused on exploring the predictive power of family maladjustment and narcissistic personality traits on the severity of methamphetamine use with craving as a mediator and social isolation as a moderator. The research design was quantitative and was of cross-sectional type. The subjects of the study were 200 people with methamphetamine use disorder who were selected using purposive sampling as clients of rehabilitation centers. Standardized questionnaires were administered to them, namely the Family Assessment Device (FAD), Narcissistic personality inventory (NPI-16), Brief substance craving scale (BSCS), UCLA Loneliness scale and Drug abuse screening test (DAST-10). The SPSS was used to analyze the data and the PROCESS Macro to analyze the mediation and moderation analysis. Results showed that family maladjustment (β = .32, p < .001) and narcissistic personality traits (β = .25, p = .002) were significant predictors of MUS severity, accounting for 54% of the variance (R² = .54). Craving significantly mediated the relationship between predictors and substance use severity (indirect effects: β = .18; 95% CI [.10, .27]) and social isolation significantly moderated the relationship between craving and methamphetamine use severity (interaction: β = .15; p < .001), with greater moderation at higher levels of social isolation. The results indicate that it is a combination of familial, personality and social factors that are involved in the severity of addiction. It accentuates, from a practical standpoint, the role of family-oriented interventions, personality-oriented therapy, craving management strategies, and strategies for social re-integration. Some limitations are cross-sectional design, self-report measures and limited generalizability. Longitudinal design and wider community samples should be used in future research. Finally, severity of methamphetamine use can be explained by a holistic psychosocial model in which all these variables family dysfunction, narcissistic traits, craving, social isolation—individually and together play a role in addiction outcomes.