A Tale of Two Cities: Financing Two Voucher Programs for Substance Abusers Through Community Donations.

Voucher-based reinforcement therapy (VBRT) is an effective drug abuse treatment, but the cost of VBRT rewards has limited its dissemination. Obtaining VBRT incentives through donations may be one way to overcome this barrier. Two direct mail campaigns solicited donations for use in VBRT for pregnant, postpartum, and parenting drug users in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and in Los Angeles, California. In Toronto, 19% of those contacted over 2 months donated $8,000 ($4,000/month) of goods and services. In Los Angeles, nearly 26% of those contacted over 34 months donated $161,000 ($4,472/month) of goods and services. Maintaining voucher programs by soliciting donations is feasible and sustainable. The methods in this article can serve as a guide for successful donation solicitation campaigns. Donations offer an alternative for obtaining VBRT rewards for substance abuse treatment and may increase its dissemination. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Qualité de vie et drogues. Place aux jeunes.

Reviews the book, Qualité de vie et drogues. Place aux jeunes (1986). In this volume, the author shares his initiatives in the plan of therapeutic and preventive intervention. This book discusses drug use and quality of life in young people. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The chemically dependent: Phases of treatment and recovery.

Reviews the book, The chemically dependent: Phases of treatment and recovery edited by Barbara C. Wallace (see record 1992-98403-000). While this book is ambitious, interesting, educational, and useful, it is also disappointing, repetitious, and incomplete. Because it tries to accomplish so much, it may appear to have succeeded too little. This book is organized around, and explicative of, several basic ideas which might have been controversial if not heretical had this book been published ten years ago. Section I, purporting to link specific "phases of recovery" to particular forms and functions of treatment, will certainly be useful for novice clinicians but falls short of its overstated goals and is thereby disappointing. Section II is a collection of moderately redundant chapters describing the etiology and treatment of substance abusers from the viewpoints of psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, ego psychology, and object-relations theorists and therapists. Section III focuses on cognitive-behavioral, self-help, and relapse-prevention treatments. Section IV is quite uneven in quality of writing and applicability of content, and could have benefited from closer editorial scrutiny or selectivity. The final section focuses on special needs of particular subpopulations of substance abusers: African-Americans, prison inmates, HIV/AIDS patients, persons who are homeless, those who have been sexually and physically abused, and others. According to the reviewer this is not the best book on substance abuse treatment, but it does present some clinically useful ideas and it is worth reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disentangling the Sources of Opioid Withdrawal Responses: Comment on McDonald and Siegel (2004).

R. V. McDonald and S. Siegel (see record 2004-10475-001) present new evidence for the idea that opioid drug-opposite responses can become conditioned to cues of initial drug onset and that they could, therefore, play a role in the development of tolerance of some drug effects and a role in the elicitation of withdrawal-like symptoms in cases in which addicted individuals are exposed to small doses of the drug they normally consume. In this comment, some puzzling features of the data are discussed, and alternative explanations are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deviance regulation: A theory of action and identity.

The authors propose a behavioral decision theory relevant to the maintenance of desirable identities. The theory, termed deviance regulation theory (DRT), predicts that actions translate into meaningful identities to the extent that they cause the individual to deviate from reference group norms. This straightforward proposition is used to predict the patterning of behavior across a wide array of social contexts. The authors present evidence that predictions generalize across Eastern and Western cultures and to both personal and collective identities. Finally, they show how DRT alters current theoretical assumptions about social motives and social and cultural influence, and they illustrate how it can help explain the structure of both informal and formal social forces. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Synthesis and characterization of poly(N‐vinyl‐2‐pyrrolidone) grafted sodium alginate hydrogel beads for the controlled release of indomethacin

Graft copolymers of sodium alginate (NaAlg) with N‐vinyl‐2‐pyrrolidone were prepared using azobisisobutyronitrile as initiator. The graft copolymers (NaAlg‐g‐PVP) were characterized with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, elemental analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry. Polymeric hydrogel beads of NaAlg and NaAlg‐g‐PVP were prepared by crosslinking method using glutaraldehyde (GA) as a crosslinker in the hydrochloric acid catalyst (HCl) and these beads were used to deliver anti‐inflammatory drug, indomethacin (IM). Chemical stability of the IM after encapsulation into beads was confirmed by FTIR. Preparation conditions of the NaAlg‐g‐PVP beads were optimized by considering the percentage entrapment efficiency, particle size, swelling capacity and their release data. In vitro release studies were performed in simulated gastric fluid (pH 1.2) for the initial 2 h, followed by simulated intestinal fluid (pH 7.4) for 4 h. Effects of GA concentration, exposure time to GA, drug/polymer (d/p) ratio, and concentration of HCl on the release of IM were discussed. It was observed that IM release from the beads decreased with increasing GA concentration and exposure time. IM release also decreases with increasing d/p ratio and HCl concentration. The highest IM release was obtained to be 77% for beads crosslinked with 0.027M GA. Swelling experiments were also performed to compute molecular mass between crosslinks of the beads. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008     

Savoring Versus Dampening: Self-Esteem Differences in Regulating Positive Affect.

Five studies examined the hypotheses that when people experience positive affect, those low in self-esteem are especially likely to dampen that affect, whereas those high in self-esteem are especially likely to savor it. Undergraduate participants' memories for a positive event (Study 1) and their reported reactions to a success (Study 2) supported the dampening prediction. Results also suggest that dampening was associated with worse mood the day after a success (Study 2), that positive and negative affect regulation are distinct, that self-esteem is associated with affect regulation even when Neuroticism and Extraversion are controlled (Studies 3 and 4), and that self-esteem may be especially important for certain types of positive events and positive affect regulation (Study 5). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-regulation and extended now: Controlling the self alters the subjective experience of time.

These studies investigated self-regulation and subjective experience of time from the perspective of the regulatory resource model. Studies 1-2 showed that participants who were instructed to regulate their emotions while viewing a film clip perceived that the film lasted longer than participants who did not regulate their emotions. In Study 3, participants provided time estimates during a resource-depleting or nondepleting task. Subsequent task persistence was measured. Time perceptions mediated the effect of initial self-regulation on subsequent self-regulated performance. In Study 4, participants performed either a resource-depleting or a nondepleting thought-listing task and then performed a different regulatory task. Compared with nondepleted participants, depleted participants persisted less on the 2nd task but estimated that they had persisted longer. Subjective time estimates statistically accounted for reduced persistence after depletion. Together, results indicate people believe that self-regulatory endeavors last overly long, a belief that may result in abandonment of further self-control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing Consequences of Substance Use: Psychometric Properties of the Inventory of Drug Use Consequences.

Negative consequences are an important component of the substance use change process, yet no standardized measure exists to assess consequences of use. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Inventory of Drug Use Consequences, a self-report measure assessing drinking and drug use consequences. Participants (N=252) were assessed at entry into outpatient substance abuse treatment. Items loaded strongly on 1 factor, and internal consistency of the total scale was high. Fifteen items with the highest correlations with the total scale were chosen to represent the construct. The shortened measure exhibited good internal consistency, convergent and discriminant validity, and detected change over time and may be the measure of substance use consequences that is lacking in the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ornament and function

The architects and builders in the past lacked our knowledge concerning fluid dynamics, but they exhibited a deep rooted ability to observe and reflect - thus, different cultures have developed by trial and error. The authors have produced a stimulating analysis which couples the science of fluid dynamics and a sensitive understanding of past cultures. The paper is recommended reading.