Intervention and prevention of drug-taking behavior: a need for divergent approaches.

This article undertakes a review of recent approaches to studying the relationship between personality and drug-taking behavior, and the implications that such research has for treatment. Emphasis is given to the need to perceive drug-taking behavior as a multidimensional phenomenon, in which the choice of drug, reason for its use, and personality and social factors, among other variables, need to be interrelated. The relationship between this approach and intervention procedures is explored, and the need to develop differential intervention strategies for drug-related problem behavior is also discussed.