Objectives: Drug injection carries with it many risks and therefore it is important to understand the initiating factors of injection and its origins. Thus,  the purpose of this study was to identify factors associated with the initiation of injection drug use among substance abusers. Methods:  Study method was a cross-sectional study. The research statistics universe constitutes a...

Objectives: The follow-up treatment or rehabilitation and monitoring of patients with drug abuse disorders require an efficient tool with a convenient and short-time implementation to measure psychological aspects of dependence. The Leeds Dependence Questionnaire (LDQ) has such features; thus, the present study aimed at evaluating the validity and reliability of its Persian version. Methods: T...

BACKGROUND Homelessness, substance use, and mental disorders each have been associated with higher rates of emergency department (ED) use and hospitalization. We sought to understand the correlation between ED use, hospital admission, and substance dependence among homeless individuals with concurrent mental illness who participated in a 'Housing First' (HF) intervention trial. METHODS The Va...

BACKGROUND Bipolar disorder (BPD) is the Axis I disorder with the highest risk for coexisting substance use disorder. One explanation for this phenomenon is the 'self-medication hypothesis', which states that some patients experience improvement in psychiatric symptoms as a result of substance use. We thus investigated reasons for substance use and perceived substance-induced improvement in BPD...

It is commonly known that patients with dependence on alcohol and drugs like opiates are psychoactive substances likecannabis and benzodiazepines as sustitutes or additions to tthe primary substance of dependence. At the alcohol and deaddiction centre at Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, where we have so far registered nearly 2300 cases of alcohol and drug dependence in th...

BACKGROUND Research in adults shows that substance dependent individuals demonstrate attentional bias (AB) for substance-related stimuli. This study investigated the role of AB in adolescents diagnosed with alcohol, cannabis, amphetamine or GHB dependency on entering therapy and six months later, and the role of executive control (EC) as a moderator of the relationship between problem severity ...

The main contribution of this paper is a novel account of ontological dependence. While dependence is often explained in terms of modality and existence, there are relations of dependence that slip through the mesh of such an account. Starting from an idea proposed by Jonathan Lowe, the article develops an account of ontological dependence based on a notion of explanation; on its basis, certain...

CONTEXT Although genetic risk factors have been found to contribute to dependence on both licit and illicit psychoactive substances, we know little of how these risk factors interrelate. OBJECTIVE To clarify the structure of genetic and environmental risk factors for symptoms of dependence on cannabis, cocaine, alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine in males and females. DESIGN Lifetime history by...

BACKGROUND The DSM uses one set of abuse and dependence criteria to assess multiple substance use disorders (SUDs). Most SUD research aggregates across these symptoms to study the behavior of SUD as a static construct. We use an alternative approach that conceptualizes symptoms as directly interacting variables in psychopathological networks. We apply network models to symptom-level data to inv...