A new study by The Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) explores media representations of alcohol and their influence on teenage drinking.
Download Young people, alcohol and the media or access the summary here. > > > > Read More
We support the University of Wisconsin-Madison's policy that requires students who commit alcohol-related violations to take a class aimed at educating them about potential dangers of alcohol misuse.
Northeastern Wisconsin contributes significantly to the UW-Madison student body, so efforts to address a social problem can strike close to home. If the policy produces positive results, it may be something for UW-Green Bay to consider, even though its campus size and climate differ greatly from Madison.
The policy was developed by the Chancellor's Alcohol Policy Group in cooperation with University Health Services. The required class is called BASIC — Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students — and gives students the option of participating in a group session (two 90-minute programs costing $78) or two one-on-one programs with a professional substance abuse counselor for $200.
The cost is in addition to the fines students have to pay for underage drinking citations or any other alcohol-related offense. > > > > Read More
Evidence indicates that Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) participation reduces relapse risk but less is known about the mechanisms through which AA confers this benefit. Initial studies indicate self-efficacy, negative affect, adaptive social networks and spiritual practices are mediators of this effect, but because these have been tested in isolation, their relative importance remains elusive. This study tested multiple mediators simultaneously to help determine the most influential pathways.
Prospective, statistically controlled, naturalistic investigation examined the extent to which these previously identified mechanisms mediated AA attendance effects on alcohol outcomes controlling for baseline outcome values, mediators, treatment, and other confounders.
Nine clinical sites within the United States.
Adults (n = 1726) suffering from alcohol use disorder (AUD) initially enrolled in a randomized study with two arms: aftercare (n = 774); and out-patient (n = 952) comparing three out-patient treatments (Project MATCH).
AA attendance during treatment; mediators at 9 months; and outcomes [percentage of days abstinent (PDA) and drinks per drinking day (DDD)] at 15 months.
Among out-patients the effect of AA attendance on alcohol outcomes was explained primarily by adaptive social network changes and increases in social abstinence self-efficacy. Among more impaired aftercare patients, in addition to mediation through adaptive network changes and increases in social self-efficacy, AA lead to better outcomes through increasing spirituality/religiosity and by reducing negative affect. The degree to which mediators explained the relationship between AA and outcomes ranged from 43% to 67%.
While Alcoholics Anonymous facilitates recovery by mobilizing
several processes simultaneously, it is changes in social factors which appear to be of primary importance.
WHO welcomes the adoption today by the UN General Assembly of the political declaration on the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke, chronic respiratory disease and cancer which together kill some 36 million people each year. For the first time, global leaders have reached consensus in the General Assembly on concrete actions to tackle these diseases.
Governments agreed on the need for global targets to monitor these diseases and their risk factors like tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and the harmful use of alcohol. The UN General Assembly has asked WHO to develop a framework for monitoring global progress and to prepare, before the end of 2012, recommendations for a set of global targets to monitor trends and assess the progress in countries to reduce the toll of suffering, disability and premature death due to these diseases. > > > > Read More
mg/kg) twice per day and ethanol intake was measured using a two-bottle free-choice method. The 8-OH-DPAT, a 5‑HT1A agonist, was injected at various doses (0.03125, 0.0625, 0.125, 0.25, 0.5, and 1.0mg/kg) before a 1-h session of exposure to ethanol (single-bottle test, water available the other 23h per day). A diet enriched with 3% tryptophan (TRP), the amino acid precursor for serotonin synthesis, was administered in a restricted feeding schedule (5h per day) with ethanol intake measured the last 4h.
As opportunities to use and abuse drugs have tremendously increased during the past 50 years, so has addiction research.
Here, we provide a systematic review on publication trends in the addiction research field. We examined publication trends in different subject categories of journals including general and multi-disciplinary science, neuroscience, pharmacology, psychiatry and, as a final and most important category, substance abuse.
In this first report, we provide a brief comprehensive overview on what has been published in terms of addiction in the general and multi-disciplinary science category versus Addiction Biology within the past decade.
We reviewed the literature within three time windows 1999/2000, 2004/2005 and 2009/2010 and selected the number of publications (1) according to the country/region where the original study was conducted; (2) according to the drug classes; (3) according to animal versus human studies; (4) and in terms of methodological trends such as genetic association studies and neuro-imaging.
We found a 350% increase in addiction-related publications in the general and multi-disciplinary science category within the past decade. This increase, however, was mainly due to increased publication output from the United States.
Concerning drug classes, alcohol-, nicotine- and psychostimulant-related publications clearly increased between 1999 and 2010, whereas published papers related to opioids decreased over time. There were also strongly increasing trends for genetic and imaging studies in the addiction field over time.
These publication trends are also reflected to a certain degree by published studies in Addiction Biology.
Request Reprint E-Mail: rainer.spanagel@zi-mannheim.de
CONCERNED by the high prevalence of non-communicable diseases, the Government is considering raising alcohol and tobacco taxes to finance the prevention and treatment of such conditions.
The move will push retail prices of the products upwards.
Speaking ahead of the United Nations High-Level Meeting on NCDs, which begins here today, Health and Child Welfare Minister Dr Henry Madzorera said he would present the proposals to Cabinet after the Summit. > > > > Read More
