Social norms of college students engaging in non-medical prescription drug use to get high: What's sex got to do with it?

Background: Relationships exist between perceived peer and own use of alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco, particularly when peers and participants are sex-matched. We investigated sex influences on social norms effects for college students' non-medical prescription drug use (NMPDU). Methods: N = 1986 college students reported on their perceptions of male and female peers' NMPDU frequency and their own past-month NMPDU. Results: Approximately 3% of students self-reported past month NMPDU, with no sex differences. In a linear mixed model, participants who engaged in NMPDU perceived significantly more frequent peer use. Female participants perceived more frequent peer NMPDU than did male participants, particularly when perceiving male peers' NMPDU. Significant positive correlations were found between perceived peer NMPDU frequency and participants' own NMPDU for all peer-participant sex combinations, with no evidence for stronger correlations with sex-matched pairs. Conclusions: While social norm interventions may be effective for college student NMPDU, sex-matching of these interventions is likely unnecessary.

Interventions to Reduce Opioid Use in Youth At-Risk and in Treatment for Substance Use Disorders: A Scoping Review.

BACKGROUND: Youth and young adults have been significantly impacted by the opioid overdose and health crisis in North America. There is evidence of increasing morbidity and mortality due to opioids among those aged 15-29. Our review of key international reports indicates there are few youth-focused interventions and treatments for opioid use. Our scoping review sought to identify, characterize, and qualitatively evaluate the youth-specific clinical and pre-clinical interventions for opioid use among youth. METHOD: We searched MedLine and PsycInfo for articles that were published between 2013 and 2021. Previous reports published in 2015 and 2016 did not identify opioid-specific interventions for youth and we thus focused on the time period following the periods covered by these prior reports. We input three groups of relevant keywords in the aforementioned search engines. Specifically, articles were included if they targeted a youth population (ages 15-25), studied an intervention, and measured impacts on opioid use. RESULTS: We identified 21 studies that examined the impacts of heterogeneous interventions on youth opioid consumption. The studies were classified inductively as psycho-social-educational, pharmacological, or combined pharmacological-psycho-social-educational. Most studies focused on treatment of opioid use disorder among youth, with few studies focused on early or experimental stages of opioid use. A larger proportion of studies focused heavily on male participants (i.e., male gender and/or sex). Very few studies involved and/or included youth in treatment/program development, with one study premised on previous research about sexual minority youth. CONCLUSIONS: Research on treatments and interventions for youth using or at-risk of opioids appears to be sparse. More youth involvement in research and program development is vital. The intersectional and multi-factorial nature of youth opioid use and the youth opioid crisis necessitates the development and evaluation of novel treatments that address youth-specific contexts and needs (i.e., those that address socio-economic, neurobiological, psychological, and environmental factors that promote opioid use among youth).

Alcohol use and death by suicide: A meta-analysis of 33 studies.

INTRODUCTION: Decades of research show an association between alcohol use and death by suicide. However, findings on the temporal link between alcohol use and death by suicide are unclear. In the most comprehensive meta-analysis on the topic to date, we analyzed data from longitudinal studies to determine if alcohol use is a risk for death by suicide. We also explored moderators to uncover conditions where the alcohol use-suicide link is strengthened/weakened. METHODS: Our literature search of six databases yielded 33 eligible studies involving 10,253,101 participants (community, psychiatric, and military samples). RESULTS: Alcohol use was associated with a 94% increase in the risk of death by suicide. Specifically, random-effects meta-analysis revealed alcohol use displayed small-to-large significant risk and odds ratios with suicide for quantity of alcohol use and alcohol use diagnosis/alcohol-related problems. Meta-regression generally indicated larger effect sizes for studies with a higher percentage of women, younger age, unadjusted estimates, longer follow-up periods, military samples, and higher frequencies and quantities of alcohol use (relative to drinker/non-drinker status). CONCLUSION: Our study highlights alcohol use as a substantive risk factor for death by suicide and underscores the importance of monitoring alcohol use among suicidal individuals and screening for suicidality among heavier alcohol users.

Reactivity to Daily Self-Monitoring of Cannabis Use in Biological Females.

Assessment reactivity involves changes to behaviours from self-monitoring those behaviours (Nelson & Hayes, 1981). In the substance use field, reactivity has been identified both as a potential confound in daily diary research (Cohn et al., 2015) and as a possible intervention tool in clinical practice (Cohn et al., 2018). Reactivity to daily self-monitoring of alcohol and tobacco use has been inconsistent in prior research. Reactivity to daily self-monitoring of cannabis use quantity has received far less study. This study involved secondary analyses of data from N = 88 females who self-monitored their cannabis use for 32 days. We examined objective reactivity of cannabis use to daily self-monitoring by assessing changes in daily cannabis use over 32 days. We also explored participants' perceptions of the impact daily self-monitoring had on their cannabis use at study completion (i.e., subjective reactivity). In hurdle models testing objective reactivity, neither probability of cannabis use, nor quantity of cannabis use, changed significantly over the study period. Many respondents (45%) reported no subjective reactivity, though a slight majority (55%) reported some subjective reactivity. Subjective reactivity did not moderate objective reactivity over time; however, higher subjective reactivity was significantly associated with increased variability (interquartile range [IQR]) in cannabis use across the self-monitoring period. Overall, reactivity appears unlikely to confound research utilizing daily diary cannabis measures, and daily self-monitoring of cannabis use may be unlikely to serve as a useful stand-alone intervention for reducing cannabis use in non-treatment-seeking individuals. Potential clinical implications of the novel finding of a link between subjective reactivity and objective cannabis use variability are discussed.