A systematic review of methamphetamine precursor regulations

Aims To assess the effectiveness of methamphetamine precursor regulations in reducing illicit methamphetamine supply and use. Methods A systematic review of 12 databases was used to identify studies that had evaluated the impact of methamphetamine precursor regulations on methamphetamine supply and/or use. The guidelines of the Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group (EPOC) of The Cochrane Collaboration were used to determine which study designs were included and assess their quality. Results Ten studies met the inclusion criteria. These studies evaluated 15 interventions (13 regulations and two related interdiction efforts), all of which were located in North America. Interventions had consistent impacts across various indicators of methamphetamine supply and use. Seven of the 15 interventions produced reductions in methamphetamine indicators (ranging from 12% to 77%). Two of the largest impacts were seen following interdiction efforts, involving the closure of rogue pharmaceutical companies. There was no evidence of a shift into other types of drug use, or injecting use, although the impact on the synthetic drug market was not examined. Null effects were related largely to the existence of alternative sources of precursor chemicals or the availability of imported methamphetamine. Conclusions Methamphetamine precursor regulations can reduce indicators of methamphetamine supply and use. Further research is needed to determine whether regulations can be effective outside North America, particularly in developing countries, and what impact they have on the broader synthetic drug market. Improved data on precursor diversion are needed to facilitate the evaluation of precursor regulations

Redefining object attachment: Development and validation of a new scale

Background and aims: Object attachment is the emotional bond or connection that we have with possessions. Although thought to be ubiquitous, when excessive, object attachment is presumed to contribute to compulsive buying and hoarding problems. Unfortunately, our understanding of this relationship has been limited by the constraints of existing object attachment measures. In this paper, we developed and validated a new self-report questionnaire, called the Object Attachment Security Measure (OASM). Methods: We developed an item pool based on previous measures and consultation with 24 experts in the field. After piloting, we administered this measure to a large sample (Final N 5 365), along with self-report measures of hoarding, compulsive buying, and previous object attachment measures. Results: We found that the OASM distinguished between secure and insecure object attachment. Both subscales showed excellent internal consistency and test-retest reliability over a two-week period. Additionally, they demonstrated excellent convergent and divergent validity, and criterion validity with measures of hoarding and compulsive buying symptoms. We also found that insecure, but not secure object attachment, was uniquely related to hoarding and compulsive buying symptomology. Discussion and conclusion: Our findings extend theoretical models, highlighting the role of insecure object attachment. Future research in both clinical and consumer behaviour fields should utilise the OASM, as reducing insecure object attachment and potentially encouraging secure object attachment could decrease maladaptive possession use and increase sustainable consumption

A naturalistic study of emotion regulation-enhanced cognitive-behavioral group therapy for hoarding disorder in a community setting

Background Cognitive-behavioral group therapy for hoarding disorder (HD) is efficacious, but outcomes are modest and dropout rates are generally high. Clinical challenges in this population include high rates of comorbidity and difficulty regulating and tolerating negative emotions, which may reduce engagement with discarding exposures and lead to increased dropout. Methods In the current naturalistic study, we evaluated standard group cognitive-behavioral therapy enhanced with a three-session emotion regulation module in a large sample of individuals (N = 115) seeking treatment for HD at a community mental health clinic. We evaluated outcomes for distress tolerance, as well as hoarding symptoms and comorbid depression and anxiety symptoms. Results Distress tolerance was significantly improved at post-treatment, Hoarding symptoms, anxiety, and depression were also significantly decreased. Distress tolerance predicted more severe hoarding symptoms at baseline, but improvement in distress tolerance was not significantly associated with improvement in hoarding symptoms. Limitations The primary limitation was the absence of a control treatment condition, but HD is known to be a chronic condition which tends not to improve in waitlist control conditions. Conclusions Integrating emotion regulation strategies may provide an important pathway to improving treatment outcomes for hoarding disorder

Object attachment: Humanness increases sentimental and instrumental values

Background and aims: People who hoard form intense attachments to their possessions and save items for sentimental and instrumental reasons. Feeling socially excluded may encourage these individuals to anthropomorphize objects (i.e., perceive them as human-like) to fulfill unmet belonging needs, which may increase the sentimental and instrumental values of objects, and then lead to stronger object attachment. Methods: We randomly assigned 331 participants with excessive acquisition tendencies to be excluded, included, or overincluded in an online ball-tossing game before presenting them with five objects that had human characteristics. Participants then completed measures assessing anthropomorphism, sentimental and instrumental values, and object attachment. Results: Inconsistent with this study hypothesis, socially excluded participants did not rate unowned objects as more human-like than the included or overincluded participants; however, stronger anthropomorphism predicted greater instrumental and sentimental values, which then predicted greater object attachment. Discussion and conclusions: Sentimental and instrumental values may explain how stronger anthropomorphism may lead to greater object attachment. Learning that leads to anthropomorphism may help us better understand object attachment

Quantifying the Clinical Significance of Cannabis Withdrawal

Background and Aims: Questions over the clinical significance of cannabis withdrawal have hindered its inclusion as a discrete cannabis induced psychiatric condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV). This study aims to quantify functional impairment to normal daily activities from cannabis withdrawal, and looks at the factors predicting functional impairment. In addition the study tests the influence of functional impairment from cannabis withdrawal on cannabis use during and after an abstinence attempt. Methods and Results: A volunteer sample of 49 non-treatment seeking cannabis users who met DSM-IV criteria for dependence provided daily withdrawal-related functional impairment scores during a one-week baseline phase and two weeks of monitored abstinence from cannabis with a one month follow up. Functional impairment from withdrawal symptoms was strongly associated with symptom severity (p = 0.0001). Participants with more severe cannabis dependence before the abstinence attempt reported greater functional impairment from cannabis withdrawal (p = 0.03). Relapse to cannabis use during the abstinence period was associated with greater functional impairment from a subset of withdrawal symptoms in high dependence users. Higher levels of functional impairment during the abstinence attempt predicted higher levels of cannabis use at one month follow up (p = 0.001). Conclusions: Cannabis withdrawal is clinically significant because it is associated with functional impairment to normal daily activities, as well as relapse to cannabis use. Sample size in the relapse group was small and the use of a non-treatment seeking population requires findings to be replicated in clinical samples. Tailoring treatments to target withdrawal symptoms contributing to functional impairment during a quit attempt may improve treatment outcomes

Anxious attachment and excessive acquisition: The mediating roles of anthropomorphism and distress intolerance

Background and aims: Most individuals with hoarding disorder (HD) are prone to excessively acquiring new possessions. Understanding the factors that contribute to this collecting behavior will allow us to develop better treatment approaches for HD. The aim of this study was to test our assumption that an anxious attachment style is associated with a tendency to anthropomorphize comforting objects and an inability to tolerate distress, which in turn leads to excessive acquisition. Methods: A total of 361 participants with subclinical to clinical acquisition problems (77.8% female) completed a series of self-report measures. Results: As expected, greater anxious attachment was related to greater distress intolerance and stronger tendencies to anthropomorphize inanimate objects. In turn, greater distress intolerance and anthropomorphism were related to more excessive buying and greater acquisition of free items. Examination of the pathways and indirect effects showed support for double mediation rather than serial mediation, as distress intolerance did not predict anthropomorphism. Discussion and conclusion: These novel findings, if replicated, suggest that adding treatment modules that target improving distress tolerance and reducing anthropomorphism to standard treatment for HD may lead to further reductions in excessive acquiring

Quantifying the Clinical Significance of Cannabis Withdrawal

Background and Aims: Questions over the clinical significance of cannabis withdrawal have hindered its inclusion as a discrete cannabis induced psychiatric condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV). This study aims to quantify functional impairment to normal daily activities from cannabis withdrawal, and looks at the factors predicting functional impairment. In addition the study tests the influence of functional impairment from cannabis withdrawal on cannabis use during and after an abstinence attempt. Methods and Results: A volunteer sample of 49 non-treatment seeking cannabis users who met DSM-IV criteria for dependence provided daily withdrawal-related functional impairment scores during a one-week baseline phase and two weeks of monitored abstinence from cannabis with a one month follow up. Functional impairment from withdrawal symptoms was strongly associated with symptom severity (p = 0.0001). Participants with more severe cannabis dependence before the abstinence attempt reported greater functional impairment from cannabis withdrawal (p = 0.03). Relapse to cannabis use during the abstinence period was associated with greater functional impairment from a subset of withdrawal symptoms in high dependence users. Higher levels of functional impairment during the abstinence attempt predicted higher levels of cannabis use at one month follow up (p = 0.001). Conclusions: Cannabis withdrawal is clinically significant because it is associated with functional impairment to normal daily activities, as well as relapse to cannabis use. Sample size in the relapse group was small and the use of a non-treatment seeking population requires findings to be replicated in clinical samples. Tailoring treatments to target withdrawal symptoms contributing to functional impairment during a quit attempt may improve treatment outcomes. © 2012 Allsop et al

Comparing Aerodynamic Efficiency in Birds and Bats Suggests Better Flight Performance in Birds

Flight is one of the energetically most costly activities in the animal kingdom, suggesting that natural selection should work to optimize flight performance. The similar size and flight speed of birds and bats may therefore suggest convergent aerodynamic performance; alternatively, flight performance could be restricted by phylogenetic constraints. We test which of these scenarios fit to two measures of aerodynamic flight efficiency in two passerine bird species and two New World leaf-nosed bat species. Using time-resolved particle image velocimetry measurements of the wake of the animals flying in a wind tunnel, we derived the span efficiency, a metric for the efficiency of generating lift, and the lift-to-drag ratio, a metric for mechanical energetic flight efficiency. We show that the birds significantly outperform the bats in both metrics, which we ascribe to variation in aerodynamic function of body and wing upstroke: Bird bodies generated relatively more lift than bat bodies, resulting in a more uniform spanwise lift distribution and higher span efficiency. A likely explanation would be that the bat ears and nose leaf, associated with echolocation, disturb the flow over the body. During the upstroke, the birds retract their wings to make them aerodynamically inactive, while the membranous bat wings generate thrust and negative lift. Despite the differences in performance, the wake morphology of both birds and bats resemble the optimal wake for their respective lift-to-drag ratio regimes. This suggests that evolution has optimized performance relative to the respective conditions of birds and bats, but that maximum performance is possibly limited by phylogenetic constraints. Although ecological differences between birds and bats are subjected to many conspiring variables, the different aerodynamic flight efficiency for the bird and bat species studied here may help explain why birds typically fly faster, migrate more frequently and migrate longer distances than bats

Pointed Wings, Low Wingloading and Calm Air Reduce Migratory Flight Costs in Songbirds

Migratory bird, bat and insect species tend to have more pointed wings than non-migrants. Pointed wings and low wingloading, or body mass divided by wing area, are thought to reduce energy consumption during long-distance flight, but these hypotheses have never been directly tested. Furthermore, it is not clear how the atmospheric conditions migrants encounter while aloft affect their energy use; without such information, we cannot accurately predict migratory species' response(s) to climate change. Here, we measured the heart rates of 15 free-flying Swainson's Thrushes (Catharus ustulatus) during migratory flight. Heart rate, and therefore rate of energy expenditure, was positively associated with individual variation in wingtip roundedness and wingloading throughout the flights. During the cruise phase of the flights, heart rate was also positively associated with wind speed but not wind direction, and negatively but not significantly associated with large-scale atmospheric stability. High winds and low atmospheric stability are both indicative of the presence of turbulent eddies, suggesting that birds may be using more energy when atmospheric turbulence is high. We therefore suggest that pointed wingtips, low wingloading and avoidance of high winds and turbulence reduce flight costs for small birds during migration, and that climate change may have the strongest effects on migrants' in-flight energy use if it affects the frequency and/or severity of high winds and atmospheric instability

Successful and unsuccessful cannabis quitters: Comparing group characteristics and quitting strategies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In order to improve treatments for cannabis use disorder, a better understanding of factors associated with successful quitting is required.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>This study examined differences between successful (<it>n </it>= 87) and unsuccessful (<it>n </it>= 78) cannabis quitters. Participants completed a questionnaire addressing demographic, mental health, and cannabis-related variables, as well as quitting strategies during their most recent quit attempt.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Eighteen strategies derived from cognitive behavioral therapy were entered into a principal components analysis. The analysis yielded four components, representing (1) Stimulus Removal, (2) Motivation Enhancement, (3) (lack of) Distraction, and (4) (lack of) Coping. Between groups comparisons showed that unsuccessful quitters scored significantly higher on Motivation Enhancement and (lack of) Coping. This may indicate that unsuccessful quitters focus on the desire to quit, but do not sufficiently plan strategies for coping. Unsuccessful quitters also had significantly more symptoms of depression and stress; less education; lower exposure to formal treatment; higher day-to-day exposure to other cannabis users; and higher cannabis dependence scores.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The findings suggest that coping, environmental modification, and co-morbid mental health problems may be important factors to emphasize in treatments for cannabis use disorder.</p