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The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal  Substance Use and Misuse , found that 19.4 percent of people answering a computerized self-administered survey in East Los Angeles community clinics admitted to moderate-to-high drug use. In Tijuana it was 5.7 percent. Rates of drug use among the participants in the study were much higher than what has been found in household surveys in the two countries. The researchers also found that Los Angeles patients born in Mexico were twice as likely, and Los Angeles patients born in the United States were six times more likely, of being moderate-to-high drug users compared with Tijuana patients born in Mexico. The findings of high rates of drug use ran counter to assumptions, said Dr. Lillian Gelberg, the study's lead investigator and a professor of family medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Prevailing expectations were that alcohol would be the major problem and drug use would be lower,'' said Ge...

"This work builds on an earlier study that found almost one-third of adults with mental illness are likely to be victims of violence within a six-month period," says Richard Van Dorn, a researcher at RTI and lead author of a paper describing the work. "In this study, we addressed two fundamental questions: If someone is victimized, is he or she more likely to become violent? And if someone is violent, is he or she more likely to be victimized? The answer is yes, to both questions." The researchers analyzed data from a database of 3,473 adult s with mental illnesses who had answered questions about both committing violence and being victims of violence. The database drew from four earlier studies that focused on issues ranging from antipsychotic medications to treatment approaches. Those studies had different research goals, but all asked identical questions related to violence and victimization. For this study, the researchers used a baseline assessment of each ...

Marijuana plant. Credit score: © jonnysek / Fotolia Marijuana use elevated and the drug's perceived harmfulness decreased amongst eighth- and 10th-graders in Washington after marijuana was legalized for leisure use by adults however there was no change amongst 12th-graders or amongst college students within the three grades in Colorado after legalization for adults there, in keeping with a brand new research printed on-line by  JAMA Pediatrics . Washington and Colorado grew to become the primary two states to legalize leisure use of marijuana for adults in 2012, adopted by handful of different states since. The potential impact of legalizing marijuana for leisure use has been a subject of appreciable debate. Magdalena Cerdá, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., of the College of California Davis College of Medication, Sacramento, and coauthors examined the affiliation between legalizing leisure use of marijuana for adults within the two states and modificati...

The study, by international scientists including researchers from Imperial College London, suggests targeting these brain pathways may lead to future treatments for the condition. The findings, published in the journal  Translational Psychiatry , also suggest connections between the parts of the brain that control our impulses may be weakened in people with gambling addiction. This work provides vital clues into the biology of gambling addiction, which is still largely unknown, explained Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones, co-author from the Department of Medicine at Imperial, and director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic, at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust. "Gambling addiction can have a devastating effect not just on patients, but also their families. It can result in people losing their job, and leave families and children homeless. "We know the condition may have a genetic component -- and that the children of gambling addicts are at higher risk...

In 2012, the study found, half of those surveyed thought e-cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes. By 2014, the number had dropped to 43 percent. During this period, advertisers often represented e-cigarettes as a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes, the researchers note. E-cigarettes are battery-operated devices that convert liquid containing nicotine into vapor that consumers inhale. The study was based on the Health Information National Trends S urveys conducted by the National Cancer Institute. The nationally representative sample included smokers, former smokers and non-smokers. The study appears online in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The researchers were surprised by the findings, given the mixed assessments of e-cigarettes' risk compared to traditional tobacco products. Since they were introduced to the U.S. market in 2007, the devices have been pitched to consumers as potentially safer alternatives to cigarettes, or even a harmless way t...

Like other chronic, life-long medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes, opioid use disorder (OUD) requires long-term engagement in therapy for its success. According to the experts, many individuals who participate in Office Based Addiction Treatment (OBAT) with buprenorphine discontinue treatment less than one year after initiation. Buprenorphine (also known as Subutex, or Suboxone when formulated with another drug, naloxone) is an effective treatment for opioid dependence. Treatment with buprenorphine has been shown to lead to reduced rates of heroin and prescription opioid use, as well as a reduction in "risky behaviors" that are associated with development of significant co-morbidities such as HIV or viral hepatitis infection. To better understand the reasons for disengagement from buprenorphine treatment, researchers from Boston University Schools of Medicine (BUSM) and (BUSPH) Public Health examined patients treated at Boston Medical Center's (BMC)...

Isaac Vaghefi, assistant professor of management information systems at Binghamton University, has developed a framework using a theory from psychology known as cognitive dissonance, which is the discomfort felt by those whose actions conflict with their beliefs (e.g. someone who believes that smoking is unhealthy but chain smokes). Along with Hamed Qahri-Saremi, assistant professor of information systems at DePaul University, Vaghefi developed a model showing that the degree of users' cognitive dissonance can make a difference in their willingness to quit their online addiction. "Dissonance is what we need to work on and what we need to help increase for users to make sure that they will do some action to limit their control," said Vaghefi. "We have users who say, 'I know I'm using a lot, but everyone around me is using a lot.' What we need to do is highlight the negative consequences for them. We can objectively use instruments that will show them ...

The results suggest that altered neural processing of risk and reward drives people with cocaine use disorder to take further risks to regain a lost reward, helping researchers to understand why cocaine users tend to make risky decisions despite the potential negative outcomes. "This paradoxical relationship between how someone acts in response to a loss can give us clues for how to develop better interventions and how to track the recovery of the brain from cocaine addiction," said first author Joshua Gowin, of the University of California San Diego, where the research was completed, and of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Maryland. In the study, 29 participants diagnosed with cocaine use disorder and 40 healthy control participants performed a Risky Gains Task, in which they could earn money by choosing between three monetary values -- the lowest value being the safest option and higher values being riskier. Dr. Gowin and colleagues...

About eight p.c of the inhabitants may have PTSD sooner or later of their lives. Wherever from 11 to 20 p.c of U.S. veterans have PTSD in any given 12 months. Credit score: © Voyagerix / Fotolia Experiments in mice by researchers at Johns Hopkins counsel that if the aim is to ease or extinguish fearful emotional recollections like these related to post-traumatic stress dysfunction, alcohol might make issues worse, not higher. Outcomes of their research reveal, they are saying, that alcohol strengthens emotional recollections related to fearful experiences and prevents mice from pushing apart their fears. In a abstract of their findings, printed on-line Jan. three in  Translational Psychiatry , the researchers say their experiments additionally recognized what they consider is the molecular mechanism chargeable for alcohol-related concern relapses and efficiently used a drug, perampanel -- at the moment used to deal with epileptic seizures...

Over a two-year period, high-dose opioid prescribing declined by 16 percent, and very-high-dose opioid prescribing dropped by 24 percent. The number of patients receiving both opioids and sedatives, which can be lethal when combined, dropped by 21 percent. The study, published in the journal  Pain , looks at the effect of the Opioid Safety Initiative rolled out by the Veterans Health Administration in late 2013 to promote safer opioid prescribing. The study examines implementation of the OSI across all of the nation's 141 VA hospitals. Under the OSI, the VHA created a "dashboard" tool using its national computerized medical record system to allow local VA clinical leaders to systematically review opioid prescribing and give physicians feedback. The researchers hope their findings could help other large health systems use their own electronic medical systems as part of a larger initiative to address a key aspect of the nation's epidemic of painkiller overdose...