Interparental conflict and adolescent depressed mood: the role of family functioning.

Family functioning was investigated as a mediator between interparental conflict and adolescent depressed mood among adolescents living in two-parent and divorced families. Data were collected three times, with one year intervals. At the initial interview, adolescents were, on the average, 15.5 years old. Two types of interparental conflict were assessed: interparental conflict involving arguments about the adolescent, and arguments focused on the parents' behaviors. The results confirmed that family functioning mediated the effects of parent issue/interparental conflict, but not adolescent issue/interparental conflict. This was most evident for girls than boys. Implications of the findings for research and practice are discussed.

Social relationships of crime-involved women cocaine users.

Social relationships play a significant role in drug use and recovery, perhaps especially for women. Research on social relationships among crime-involved women drug users is reviewed, including both well established findings and more recent topics of inquiry. Several open questions about social relationships of women drug users are then examined in data from a study conducted in the Miami (Florida) metropolitan area in 1994-1996. For a study of barriers to drug treatment for crime-involved women cocaine users, over 400 women were interviewed in treatment programs and an equal number were recruited on the street. Respondents were asked about their social relationships during the last 30 days on the street in regard to both legal and illegal activities. This included crime partnerships, help obtaining cocaine, living arrangements, help with living expenses, children and help with child care, help with several ordinary problems, and pressures to enter treatment. The analysis looks at how much social support crime-involved women cocaine users have in their ordinary daily activities, who provides this support, and findings from this data set relative to open questions in the literature.

Drug use patterns of adult crack users in street versus residential treatment samples.

Studies of treatment samples have long been the primary source of generalizations about drug users, especially for drugs with very low prevalence rates in the general population, such as heroin and crack. Sample selection bias is briefly discussed, and a 1988-1990 study of 699 cocaine users in Miami is described. The drug patterns of the 387 adult crack users interviewed in that study are compared by sample type--residential treatment versus street, controlling for gender. Some similarities between sample types were found, but differences were more numerous. Notably, street respondents started cocaine at a younger age; had used crack regularly for a longer period of time; were more likely to have used pills, heroin, and freebase cocaine; were much more likely to be using crack (but only crack) on a daily basis; and were more likely to obtain crack by being paid in it, especially for drug dealing. Treatment respondents were more likely to use multiple forms of cocaine, to use cocaine in a binge pattern and with high per-day dosages, and to pay for cocaine with cash they got from a job.

Cocaine use patterns and overdose.

The question of how cocaine overdoses are related to preferred routes of cocaine administration and other aspects of cocaine use patterns is sufficiently complex that very little information is available on it. Even the most extensive information on cocaine overdoses, that of the Drug Abuse Warning Network, is severely limited for purposes of examining this topic. Findings are presented from a 1988-1990 study of a purposive but demographically diverse sample of 699 crack and other cocaine users in Miami, 349 of them interviewed in residential treatment and 350 interviewed on the street. Among these respondents: a history of cocaine overdose is extremely common; overdose episodes do not commonly motivate treatment entry and in some populations are relatively unlikely to result in an emergency room visit; cocaine overdose is less associated with crack smoking than with snorting or intravenous (IV) use, whereas IV use is especially likely to result in overdose; and the street and treatment samples are strikingly different in regard to drug use patterns, overdose history, changes some users made to use patterns as a result of overdose experiences, and reasons given by other users for not making such changes.