You\u27re So Harsh On Me: Meanness in Psychopathy and Perceived Family Criticism

Overall, the lack of research on percieved criticism, especially within populations that display meanness, show a need for research because just like mood, percieved criticism may change throughout the day. Understanding the relationship between psychopathic meanness and momentary patterns of percieved criticism among family members could provide helpful insight into social interactions and elucidating patterns of family dysfunction involved in the most antagonistic features of psychopathy.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/durep_posters/1151/thumbnail.jp

Shared Control Individuals in Health Policy Evaluations with Application to Medical Cannabis Laws

Health policy researchers often have questions about the effects of a policy implemented at some cluster-level unit, e.g., states, counties, hospitals, etc. on individual-level outcomes collected over multiple time periods. Stacked difference-in-differences is an increasingly popular way to estimate these effects. This approach involves estimating treatment effects for each policy-implementing unit, then, if scientifically appropriate, aggregating them to an average effect estimate. However, when individual-level data are available and non-implementing units are used as comparators for multiple policy-implementing units, data from untreated individuals may be used across multiple analyses, thereby inducing correlation between effect estimates. Existing methods do not quantify or account for this sharing of controls. Here, we describe a stacked difference-in-differences study investigating the effects of state medical cannabis laws on treatment for chronic pain management that motivated this work, discuss a framework for estimating and managing this correlation due to shared control individuals, and show how accounting for it affects the substantive results

Comparing Self-Reported Quality of Life in Youth with Bipolar Versus Other Disorders

Objectives: This study benchmarks quality of life (QoL) of youth with bipolar disorder (BD) against healthy youth, youth with chronic medical conditions, and youth with other psychiatric disorders. The relative impacts of depressive, (hypo)manic, mixed, and externalizing symptoms on QoL is tested for youth with BD. Method: 657 youth completed the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for Children (KSADS), the KSADS depression and mania scales, the Parent General Behavior Inventory (PGBI), and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Youth-reported QoL was determined by the Revised Children Quality of Life Questionnaire (KINDL) and was compared to healthy youth, youth with chronic medical conditions, and youth with other psychiatric disorders. Results: Youth with BD reported poorer QoL overall and on most subscales compared to healthy youth, youth with chronic medical conditions, youth with behavior disorders, and youth with other non-behavior/non-mood disorders. QoL in youth with BD did not differ significantly from QoL in youth with unipolar depression. Parent-report and interview-rated depressive symptoms were associated with decreases in Total QoL and all QoL subscales except Family. Externalizing symptoms were associated with decreases in Family QoL and increases in Friend QoL, and (hypo)manic symptoms were associated with increases in Emotional Well-Being QoL. Conclusions: Depressive symptoms may drive the decline in QoL causing youth with BD to rate their QoL worse than healthy youth, youth with chronic medical conditions, and youth with behavior disorders, but not worse than youth with unipolar depression

Effects of state opioid prescribing cap laws on opioid prescribing after surgery

ObjectiveTo evaluate the effects of state opioid prescribing cap laws on opioid prescribing after surgery.Data SourcesOptumLabs Data Warehouse administrative claims data covering all 50 states from July 2012 through June 2019.Study DesignWe included individuals from 20 states that had implemented prescribing cap laws without exemptions for postsurgical pain by June 2019 and individuals from 16 control states plus the District of Columbia. We used a difference‐in‐differences approach accounting for differential timing in law implementation across states to estimate the effects of state prescribing cap laws on postsurgical prescribing of opioids. Outcome measures included filling an opioid prescription within 30 days after surgery; filling opioid prescriptions of specific doses or durations; and the number, days’ supply, daily dose, and pill quantity of opioid prescriptions. To assess the validity of the parallel counterfactual trends assumption, we examined differences in outcome trends between law‐implementing and control states in the years preceding law implementation using an equivalence testing framework.Data Collection/Extraction MethodsWe included the first surgery in the study period for opioid‐naïve individuals undergoing one of eight common surgical procedures.Principal FindingsState prescribing cap laws were associated with 0.109 lower days’ supply of postsurgical opioids on the log scale (95% Confidence Interval [CI]: −0.139, −0.080) but were not associated with the number (Average treatment effect on the treated [ATT]: −0.011; 95% CI: −0.043, 0.021) or daily dose of postsurgical opioid prescriptions (ATT: −0.013; 95% CI: −0.030, 0.005). The negative association observed between prescribing cap laws and the probability of filling a postsurgical opioid prescription (ATT: −0.041; 95% CI: −0.054, −0.028) was likely spurious, given differences between law‐implementing and control states in the pre‐law period.ConclusionsPrescribing cap laws appear to have minimal effects on postsurgical opioid prescribing.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/174807/1/hesr14023.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/174807/2/hesr14023_am.pd