A history of drug dependence is associated with negative mental health outcomes
Achieving excellent mental health after drug dependence is more prevalent among older respondents, those with a post-secondary education, married respondents, those with higher levels of social support, and those without a history depression or anxiety
2021-07-14
(Press-News.org) New research published online in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction found that Canadians with a history of drug dependence are much less likely to have flourishing mental health and are more likely to have mental illness.
Researchers compared a nationally representative sample of 460 Canadians with a history of illicit drug dependence (excluding cannabis) to 20,305 Canadians with no history of illicit drug dependence using data drawn from Statistic Canada's Canadian Community Health Survey-Mental Health.
While 80% of those with a history of drug dependence were in remission, more than half (52.1%) were still experiencing mental illness. Further, only 37.9% were in excellent mental health, which is markedly lower than the 74.1% of Canadians without a history of drug dependence who had excellent mental health. To be considered in excellent mental health, participants had to report: 1) freedom from mental illness in the previous year (i.e., substance dependence, psychiatric disorders, suicidality); 2) almost daily happiness or life satisfaction in the past month; and 3) high levels of social and psychological well-being in the past month.
"Remission from dependence is an important factor in the recovery process, but we also want to consider mental health outcomes beyond abstinence," says first author, Andie MacNeil, a recent Master of Social Work graduate from the University of Toronto. "We want to think about how we can support the psychological and social well-being of people recovering from drug dependence."
The current study found several factors that were associated with excellent mental health among those in remission from drug dependence, including older age and social support.
"As people age, they often experience declines in impulsivity and increased role responsibilities in their personal and professional lives," says senior author Esme Fuller-Thomson, professor at the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and director of the Institute for Life Course and Aging. "Older individuals often move away from the social circles and contexts where drug use is more prevalent, which in turn can help support their recovery."
A post-secondary education, being married, and no lifetime history of major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder were among the other factors associated with both remission from drug dependence and excellent mental health.
Although the Statistics Canada survey used for the study did not collect information on interventions that participants may have used to support their recovery, other research indicates that various psychosocial approaches (such as Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and pharmacological approaches (such as Opioid Agonist Therapy) can help individuals reduce drug use and recover from dependence.
Drug dependence is a major public health crisis, with drug overdoses now representing one of the leading causes of death for adults under 50 in the United States. Although opioids tend to be the driving substance behind overdose deaths, there has been significant increases in cocaine-involved deaths and psychostimulant-involved deaths in recent years. In the United States, illicit drug use has an estimated cost of $193 billion per year due to healthcare expenditures, criminal justice costs, and loss productivity.
"Considering the tremendous loss of life due to drug dependence and its associated economic consequences, there needs to be a greater understanding of factors associated with both remission and with broader aspects of recovery, such as mental well-being," says MacNeil.
INFORMATION:
A copy of the paper is available to credentialed journalist upon request. Please contact andie.macneil@mail.utoronto.ca
Media contacts:
Andie MacNeil
andie.macneil@mail.utoronto.ca
&
Professor Esme Fuller-Thomson
Director, Institute for Life Course & Aging
Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work
University of Toronto
esme.fuller.thomson@utoronto.ca
416-209-3231
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-07-14
Unlike other population-level stressful events such as natural disasters, COVID-19 has not resulted in a net increase in smoking, according to a new study from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Project, at the University of Waterloo.
The researchers also found that although nearly half of smokers reported that COVID-19 made them think about quitting, the vast majority of smokers did not change their smoking habits during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Led by Shannon Gravely, research assistant professor with the ITC Project, the study ...
2021-07-14
Before Millennials were over laugh-cry emojis, they were the most used emojis across the world, according to researchers at USC. The emoji was more popular than smiley faces say researchers who categorized millions of tweets across 30 countries and evaluated over 1700 emojis. Their study, "An empirical study of emoji usage on Twitter in linguistic and national contexts" was published in Online Social Networks and Media.
Mayank Kejriwal, a research assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and a research lead at the USC Information Sciences Institute who is the lead author on the paper, says approximately 100 emojis are used most often.
The most important take away? Emojis represent ...
2021-07-14
A new study by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, University of Oxford, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, and the Medical University of Graz, has found that lateral flow tests detect Covid-19 with similar accuracy to laboratory-based PCR tests, providing they are used at the onset of infection and soon after symptoms start.
Lateral flow tests are cheaper and produce a result in just 30 minutes - much faster than the time it takes to receive a PCR test result, which can take 1-3 days. The finding could be pivotal to national strategies ...
2021-07-14
A team of geneticists and archaeologists from Ireland, France, Iran, Germany, and Austria has sequenced the DNA from a 1,600-year-old sheep mummy from an ancient Iranian salt mine, Chehrābād. This remarkable specimen has revealed sheep husbandry practices of the ancient Near East, as well as underlining how natural mummification can affect DNA degradation.
The incredible findings have just been published in the international, peer-reviewed journal Biology Letters.
The salt mine of Chehrābād is known to preserve biological material. Indeed, it is in this mine that human remains of the famed "Salt Men" were recovered, dessicated by the salt-rich environment. The ...
2021-07-14
Survival for a baby born with a birth defect - otherwise known as a congenital anomaly - is a "post-code lottery", according to scientists from 74 countries.
A study published today in The Lancet, led by researchers from King's College London, examined the risk of mortality for nearly 4000 babies born with birth defects in 264 hospitals around the world. The study found babies born with birth defects involving the intestinal tract have a two in five chance of dying in a low-income country compared to one in five in a middle-income country and one in twenty in a high-income country.
Gastroschisis, a birth defect where the baby is born with ...
2021-07-14
A global study provides up-to-date estimates for the effect of alcohol consumption on cancers worldwide. It suggests that 4% of all newly diagnosed cancers in 2020 may be associated with drinking alcohol, with men accounting for more than three quarters of those cases.
Risky and heavy drinking was estimated to contribute the highest number of cancer cases, but moderate drinking - the equivalent of around two daily drinks - was estimated to lead to more than 103,000 cases in 2020, almost 1 in 7 of all alcohol-associated cases.
The proportion of new cancer cases associated with alcohol varied widely between world regions, with the lowest found in Northern Africa and Western Asia, and the highest in ...
2021-07-14
COVID-19 is marked by heightened inflammation and abnormal clotting in the blood vessels, particularly in the lungs, and is believed to contribute to progression to severe disease and death. New trial results show that administering a full dose of a standard blood thinner early to moderately ill hospitalized patients with COVID-19 could halt the thrombo-inflammation process and reduce the risk of severe disease and death.
The study, led by investigators at St. Michael's Hospital, a site of Unity Health Toronto, and the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine, is available as ...
2021-07-14
A scientific team has shown that the release of neurotransmitters in the brain is impaired in patients with schizophrenia who have a rare, single-gene mutation known to predispose people to a range of neurodevelopmental disorders.
Significantly, the results from the research with human-derived neurons validated previous and new experiments that found the same major decrease in neurotransmitter release and synaptic signaling in genetically engineered human neurons with the same genetic variant - the deletion of neurexin 1 (NRXN1). NRXN1 is a protein-coding gene at the synapse, a cellular junction that ...
2021-07-14
WACO, Texas (July 13, 2021) - Climate change mitigation efforts have led to shifts from fossil-fuel dependence to large-scale renewable energy. However, renewable energy sources require significant land and could come at a cost to ecosystems. A new study led by Ryan McManamay, Ph.D., assistant professor of environmental science at Baylor University, evaluates potential conflicts between alternative energy strategies and biodiversity conservation.
The study, published in Biological Conservation, evaluates potential tradeoffs between climate benefits ...
2021-07-13
Cancer survivors ages 18 to 64 faced fewer financial barriers to health care after the Affordable Care Act was implemented than they did before the landmark law took effect, University of Michigan researchers found.
In fact, they believe the ACA helped the financial burden (problems related to the cost of medical care) for younger cancer survivors fall to its lowest estimated levels in 20 years.
"There has been a lot of talk about the ACA affecting people who don't have the Medicare safety net," said Christopher Su, M.D., a clinical fellow in the division of hematology and oncology at Michigan Medicine and the first author of the paper. "We were able to drill down to that and show that it did make a difference to younger cancer ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] A history of drug dependence is associated with negative mental health outcomes
Achieving excellent mental health after drug dependence is more prevalent among older respondents, those with a post-secondary education, married respondents, those with higher levels of social support, and those without a history depression or anxiety
