The objective of this study was to describe the predictors of substance use relapse of American Indian (AI) women up to one year following substance abuse treatment. Relapse is defi ned as any use of alcohol or drugs in the past 30 days at the follow-up points. Data were collected from AI women in a 45-day residential substance abuse treatment program. Predictors include distal (in time) proxim...

OBJECTIVE To produce an expert consensus hierarchy of harm to self and others from legal and illegal substance use. DESIGN Structured questionnaire with nine scored categories of harm for 19 different commonly used substances. SETTING/PARTICIPANTS 292 clinical experts from across Scotland. RESULTS There was no stepped categorical distinction in harm between the different legal and illegal...

McGuire and Ruhm (1993) develop an interesting and policy-relevant model of workplace drug abuse policy. They examine workers’ choice to undergo treatment (rehabilitation) for substance abuse and firms’ choice of drug-testing policies, concluding that ‘labor market incentives will generally lead to too little treatment and too much testing’. Drug addicts are assumed to have a ‘high’ probability...

BACKGROUND Although substance misuse is a key risk factor in suicide, relatively little is known about the relationship between lifetime misuse and misuse at the time of suicide. AIMS To examine the relationship between substance misuse and subsequent suicide. METHOD Linkage of coroners' reports to primary care records for 403 suicides occurring over 2 years. RESULTS With alcohol misuse, ...

This article presents an empirically validated intervention, Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT), for the treatment of adolescent drug abusers. The BSFT intervention steps and program format are presented. Challenges to implementation in community treatment settings are discussed to identify factors that may facilitate or block the integration of BSFT into community practice settings. In part...

BACKGROUND UK Government expenditure on combatting drug abuse is based on estimates of illicit drug users, yet the validity of these estimates is unknown. This study aims to assess the face validity of problematic drug use (PDU) and injecting drug use (IDU) estimates for all English Drug Action Teams (DATs) in 2001. The estimates were derived from a statistical model using the Multiple Indicato...

Quality of life is related to one of the basic human desires, which is to live well and feel good. The scope of this study was to evaluate the quality of life of psychoactive substance users and relatives, compared to non-users, analyzed by socioeconomic strata. A cross-sectional study with users of psychoactive substances, relatives, and other individuals who called the Information and Orienta...

Very little attention has been paid to the invisible epidemic of substance misuse among older people in the UK. This article looks at the prevalence of substance misuse in the people over the age of 60. The reasons for difficulty in diagnosing substance misuse are explored and ways to improve diagnostic ability are discussed. Substance misuse leads to severe physical and psychiatric morbidity t...

She has published extensively on organized crime, drugs, and illegal markets. In the 1990s, she served as consultant to the Italian Ministries of the Interior and Justice and the UNODCCP. The decade following the breakdown of the Soviet Union has registered a rapid growth of illegal drug use and trade in Russia. Illicit psychoactive substances were consumed even prior 1991, but the former USSR ...

Substance abuse refers to drug abuse where the drug users become several affected due to the effects of the drugs. Some of the substances that are commonly abused include: alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine and inhalants. In adolescents/ youths the individuals may fall back in class, he or she may become antisocial and withdraws from the society and friend’s etc. excessive use of these drugs ...