The Effectiveness of Emotional Regulation Training on Aggression and Coping Styles of Methamphetamine Substance Abusers

Background and Aim: In recent years, drug addiction has become a widespread phenomenon among different social groups with other characteristics. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of emotional regulation training on aggression and coping styles of methamphetamine addicts. Materials and Methods: The present study population is all methamphetamine addicts in Varamin city. The research sample of 30 people with methamphetamine addicts was selected from the addiction treatment clinic by available sampling and randomly allocated into two experimental and control groups. The emotion regulation protocol was trained in the experimental group during the 12 sessions, but the control group did not receive any training. To measure the variables, Bass and Perry Aggression Questionnaire (1992) and Andler and Parker’s (1990) Coping Style Questionnaire were used in pre-test and post-test. Results: At the end of the sessions, data were analyzed using a covariance test. The results showed that emotional regulation training effectively decreases aggression, improves task-oriented and emotion-oriented coping styles, and reduces the avoidant coping style in methamphetamine addicts. Conclusion: Due to the proliferation of social damage, such as methamphetamine addiction, experts in this field need to master new and effective ways of regulating emotions to help these patients prevent relapse to using the drug

Finding the Most Preferred Decision-Making Unit in Data Envelopment Analysis

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) evaluates the efficiency of the transformation of a decision-making unit’s (DMU’s) inputs into its outputs. Finding the benchmarks of a DMU is one of the important purposes of DEA. The benchmarks of a DMU in DEA are obtained by solving some linear programming models. Currently, the obtained benchmarks are just found by using the information of the data of inputs and outputs without considering the decision-maker’s preferences. If the preferences of the decision-maker are available, it is very important to obtain the most preferred DMU as a benchmark of the under-assessment DMU. In this regard, we present an algorithm to find the most preferred DMU based on the utility function of decision-maker’s preferences by exploring some properties on that. The proposed method is constructed based on the projection of the gradient of the utility function on the production possibility set’s frontier

Personal, Familial, and Social Risk and Protective Factors of Tendency towards Substance Use among Students

Background and Objective: University students are among vulnerable groups to tendency towards substance use. Accordingly, this study aimed to investigate the role of personal, familial, and social risk and protective factors in the prediction of tendency to this behavior among students.Materials and Methods: This descriptive correlational study was carried out on 431 students of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences who were selected by convenience sampling. Data were collected by Risk and Protective Factors Inventory (RPFI) and Youth Risk Taking Scale (YRTS) and then, were analyzed by Pearson correlation method and stepwise multivariate regression.Results: Data analysis using Pearson Correlation Coefficient showed significant relationships between personal (e.g. attitude towards substance use and tendency to drug use; r=0.6, P<0.01), familial (e.g. parent attitude towards substance and tendency towards smoking cigarettes; r=0.2, P<0.05), and social (e.g. perceived accessibility and tendency towards alcohol; r=0.4, P<0.01) factors with tendency to substance use. Moreover, the results of stepwise multivariate regression analysis indicated that personal factors (i.e. attitude towards substance use, sensation seeking, and impulsivity), social factors (i.e. friends’ substance use and perceived accessibility), and familial factors (i.e. family monitoring and parents’ attitude towards substance use) were the best predictors of tendency towards substance use in students, respectively.Conclusion: In conclusion, current results indicated that a series of individual, familial, and social factors affect tendency towards substance use among students. Accordingly, identifying vulnerable students using suitable screening tests and providing them with primary prevention programs is of the utmost importance