International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction

Problematic social media use (PSMU) among adolescents has raised global concern in the current digital age. Despite the important role of perceived social support in adolescents' PSMU has been examined, possible different influences between perceived support from family and friends are still unknown. To address the gap, the present study aimed to examine how perceived support from family and friends is associated differently with PSMU and the mediating roles of resilience and loneliness therein. A sample of 1056 adolescents was recruited to complete standard questionnaires...

The present study followed the newly hypothesized "suicidal drive for psychosis" suggesting that psychosis may be consequential to suicidal ideation (SI) and behavior and attempted to explain parts of the pathway between these variables. To this end, we aimed to test whether problematic smartphone use (PSU) has an indirect mediating effect in the cross-sectional relationship between SI and positive psychotic experiences (PEs). Lebanese community young adults ( N =4158; 64.4% females; mean age 21.91±3.79) have been invited to participate to a cross-sectional, web-based study in the period from June to September 2022...

Poor mental health of healthcare students is a cause for concern in many universities. Though previous research has identified mental health shame and self-compassion as critical in this student group, how these variables differ across different healthcare disciplines remains to be evaluated. Healthcare students ( n  = 344; counselling, occupational therapy, social work and nursing) completed measures regarding these variables. MANOVA and regression analyses were performed. (1) Counselling and nursing students were more depressed than occupational therapy students; (2) nursing students were more anxious than occupational therapy and social work students; (3) occupational therapy students had more positive attitudes towards mental health than the others; and (4) nursing students worried about their own reputation associated with their family more than counselling students...

UNLABELLED: Cannabis is the fourth psychoactive substance to be legalized which are of far-reaching significance to the world. We analyzed data from the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) to estimate the incidence and prevalence of cannabis use disorder (CUD) and calculated the disease burden of CUD in 204 countries and territories and 21 regions over the past three decades. We reported disease burden due to CUD in terms of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), age-standardized rate (ASR), estimated annual percentage change (EAPC), and analyzed associations between the burden of CUD and sociodemographic index (SDI) quintiles...

UNLABELLED: In the context of an ongoing and worsening drug overdose epidemic in the USA, increases in free support services like self-help groups may be expected. We estimated differences in self-help use by age, period, or cohort among people who may have needed treatment. We included N  = 92,002 adults from the 2002-2018 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health who met past-year DSM-IV substance use disorder criteria or received alcohol/drug treatment in any location. We used hierarchical age-period-cohort (HAPC) modeling to estimate average age-period-cohort associations with self-help...

UNLABELLED: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is an ongoing geriatric health emergency with a substantial increase in the prevalence of medical and mental health issues, particularly among older adults living in residential care homes. The knowledge of the risk and protective factors related to the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on older adults living in residential care homes is based on limited data. This study aimed to investigate whether loneliness mediates the effects of fear generated by a pandemic on depression...

Transitioning from holistic analysis to a fine-grained level analysis may provide further understanding of psychopathology. This study aimed to explore dimension-level relationships between suicidal ideation, meaning in life, and affect in a joint framework using network analysis and to identify potential prevention and intervention targets to address suicidal ideation. A total of 852 healthy adults aged 18-35 years completed self-report scales to assess suicidal ideation, meaning in life, and affect. A regularized partial correlation network was then built to examine the links between these dimensions...

Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) is a comprehensive approach to identifying people at risk of addiction, but its feasibility for gaming disorder is unknown. This study surveyed 88 clinicians from gambling, alcohol and other drugs, and youth services in New Zealand. Results indicated that the most frequent GD screening method was an unstructured interview (61%), but 74% stated they would use a standardized tool if available. Responsivity to the detection of GD was an immediate intervention (84%), and rates of referral were low (28%)...

UNLABELLED: This study aimed to investigate the long-term patterns and predictors of heroin use, dependence, and psychiatric health over 18-20 years among a cohort of Australians with heroin dependence, using a prospective longitudinal cohort study conducted in Sydney, Australia. The original cohort consisted of 615 participants, who were followed up at 3 months and 1, 2, 3, 11, and 18-20 years post-baseline; 401 (65.2%) were re-interviewed at 18-20 years...

The prevention of problematic online gambling behavior is a topic of major interest for regulators, the gambling industry, and researchers. Many gambling operators approach this issue by using responsible gambling tools. Among such tools, mandatory play breaks are used to interrupt long online gambling sessions, providing "cooling off" periods for players to take a reflective "time out". The present study investigated the effects of mandatory play breaks in a large-scale experiment with 23,234 online gamblers engaging in more than 870,000,000 gambling transactions on Norsk Tipping's gambling platform over a 1-month period...

Individuals whose basic needs are naturally satisfied are much less dependent on their environment and more autonomous. Basic psychological needs (i.e., the general motivators of human actions) are significant predictors of online gaming addiction. Moreover, it has been posited that meaning and responsibility in life are at the center of life from an existential point of view. Therefore, a hypothetical model was tested to examine the relationships between basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness), online gaming addiction, responsibility, and meaning in life...

The onset age of anxiety is decreasing worldwide, yet the majority of the study conducted on anxiety were focused on adult populations. This study aimed to investigate the mediating effect of psychological capital and coping style tendency on the relationship between emotional intelligence and anxiety in Chinese adolescents and provide empirical evidence for research and prevention. A cross-sectional study recruited 5747 participants from 5 randomly selected middle schools in the northeast China. Study results showed that high emotional intelligence ( P  < 0...

This qualitative study aimed to capture the lived experiences of first responders (FRs) combatting the opioid epidemic in an effort to better understand how the increase in opioids, opioid-related harm, and opioid-related death has affected the FR profession. FRs ( N  = 30) from Tennessee partook in semi-structured interviews investigating the impact of responding to opioid-related incidents. Using a phenomenological approach, three response themes emerged including (1) opioid epidemic burden on FR mental health, (2) variable availability and effectiveness of resources, and (3) identified roles of FRs in reducing the impact of the epidemic...

UNLABELLED: COVID-19 is a new type of trauma that has never been conceptually or empirically analyzed in our discipline. This study aimed to investigate the impact of COVID-19 as traumatic stress on mental health after controlling for individuals' previous stressors and traumas. We utilized a sample of (N = 1374) adults from seven Arab countries. We used an anonymous online questionnaire that included measures for COVID-19 traumatic stress, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and cumulative stressors and traumas...

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Canada legalized non-medical cannabis use and supply for adults in 2018. We examined developments and changes associated with the legalization policy reform on key indicators for public health, namely cannabis (including frequent/problematic) use prevalence, cannabis-related hospitalizations, cannabis-impaired driving, and cannabis sourcing. We identified peer-reviewed and "grey" study data that featured population-level or other quasi-representative samples and comparable outcome data for pre- and post-legalization periods, including possible trends of changes over time...

UNLABELLED: Few studies have analyzed the clinical profile of treatment-seeking patients with the comorbid presence of schizophrenia (SCZ) and gambling disorder (GD), which warrants new research to assess the network structure of this complex mental condition. The aim of this study was to explore the organization of the symptoms and other clinical correlates of SCZ with GD. Network analysis was applied to a sample of N = 179 SCZ patients (age range: 19-70 years, mean=39.5, SD=9.9) who met clinical criteria for gambling disorder-related problems...

The objectives were: (a) to establish cannabis use prevalence in university students; (b) to determine the changes in consumption of cannabis between prior to and during lockdown. Problematic consumption, gender, and age were taken into account to establish risk groups. Of 1,472 participants between 18-54 years (M = 27.51), 8.01% reported using cannabis before and/or during lockdown (56.6% male). The Cannabis Abuse Screening Test (CAST) was used to detect cannabis abuse. The main form of consumption was spliffs (89...

Looking at the rapidity the social media has gained ascendancy in the society, coupled with considerable shortage of addressing the health of the social media users, there is a pressing need for employing mechanized systems to help identify individuals at risk. In this study, we investigated potential of people's social media language in order to predict their vulnerability towards the future episode of mental distress. This work aims to (a) explore the most frequent affective expressions used by online users which reflect their mental health condition and (b) develop predictive models to detect users with risk of psychological distress...

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a psychoactive substance use crisis in many countries, including México. Remote valid tools to identify high-risk groups in need for treatment are a prerequisite for cost-effective interventions in primary care settings. To determine the validity and correlates of the remote applications of the Alcohol, Smoking, and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST) with sex, age, and psychological care-seeking, offered remotely in primary settings, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico, a total sample of 19,109 Mexicans, with an average age of 34...