Monthly Archive for: ‘October, 2012’
NIDA For Teens
NIDA’s Where Are They Now? Series #1: Deciding Your Future
“The Sara Bellum Blog” (SBB) recently caught up with a few past winners of the NIDA Addiction Science Fair Award to find out what the teens are doing now. Not everyone has followed a science path, but they are all in college pursuing their interests. In this series, the winners offer advice for today’s high school students trying to figure out what to do after graduation.
In 2010, Joey Yagoda of Great Neck, NY, wondered why students cut classes when it seemed like such a risky thing to do. To answer the question, he surveyed classmates and analyzed their responses. His analysis, “Risky Business: What Cognitive Factors Influence Risk Taking in the Academic Setting?” revealed that most students cut class because they believe “everyone else does it.”
Now, as a junior at Yale University, Joey’s taking his experience in behavioral research to the next level. With an interdisciplinary major in Ethics, Policy, and Economics, he’s focusing in on a field called decision science, which tries to answer the question, how can understanding the processes of decision-making, whether it’s by individuals, organizations, or government, become a tool to create better public policy?
Discovering Lessons for Life
Completing his science fair research project and winning a national award helped Joey discover what he enjoyed doing. “It’s hard to know what you’re interested in [when you’re in high school],” Joey explained. “The experience to meet with NIDA gave me a ton of insight, where I was able to meet with top scientists and help fund my college experience.”
Joey’s studies have led to even greater opportunities, including a summer internship with a company in New York that looks at large-scale economics modeling and an undergraduate fellowship with top researchers in child development. The fellowship gave him the chance to visit with leaders in public policy in Washington, DC, to learn how research affects policy. “Research has meant so much to me,” Joey said. “It gives you a skill set to bring into college and, later, a professional environment.”
His advice to high school students still trying to figure things out: “Explore the global world. Once you get excited about something, follow it. It’s really a cool time to be growing up.
PRC SOFTBALL – KEEP ON PLAYIN!
Pasadena Recovery Center men and women have been playing Friday Afternoon Softball almost from the time PRC was born in the early 2001. PRC founder, psychiatrist/addiction specialist Dr. Lee Bloom and his son Mike kicked off the program, saying, “We always want to wind up the week on a high note; it’s important the clients can learn that recovery can be fun.”
In the beginning ragtag teams played whomever they could find sporadically around the Pasadena area, until coach/therapist Butch Warner found them a home field at Farnsworth Park in Altadena, California. In the last few years PRC softball has enjoyed incredible success against other rehabs like Bishop Gooden, Impact, Grandview, Walden House, People in Progress, Casa de Las Amigas, and Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab teams. In the last two years PRC’s winning percentage has been over .700, and the teams have included luminaries from professional sports, including a former MLB Most Valuable Player, several renowned college athletes, and some rock stars and actors who surprised us with their athletic prowess.
PRC clients look forward to their festive Friday Afternoon Softball almost like high schools and colleges, and, win or lose, everyone who wants to gets to play. They know that the name of the game, ultimately, is fun in recovery.
The Present and Promise of mHealth
Only 15 percent of people who need drug abuse treatment seek help, in part because it is difficult to take the first step. Responding to this issue, NIDA researchers have developed a computer program that motivates and encourages treatment seeking at a particularly opportune juncture: when an individual is in a primary care physician’s waiting room. Program users enter information on a portable device and receive feedback about health risks related to their drug abuse, along with advice, immediately prior to seeing their physician.
This program, called the Video Doctor, was developed at the University of California, San Francisco, and takes advantage of some of the capabilities that make today’s mobile communications devices immensely powerful tools for health promotion and research. Cell phones, tablet computers, and portable entertainment systems can nonconfrontationally engage individuals on sensitive topics, collect information, make personalized assessments, and deliver appropriate messages virtually anywhere and anytime. The deployment of these devices for health uses—called mHealth—is today a focus of intense activity in the addiction field as well as throughout medicine.
NIDA-funded researchers are devising a variety of mHealth approaches to enhance the reach, potency, and cost-effectiveness of drug abuse prevention and treatment. Some aim to help patients meet common challenges in treatment. Patients might log into one application, for example, in moments of stress or drug cravings. The application would assist the patient through the crisis, perhaps with reminders of skills learned in therapy, with distractions or with calls to supportive friends. Another possible mHealth application would remind patients to take medications. This would maintain the health of many drug abusers, including those with HIV, among whom strict adherence to medication schedules reduces both disease progression and disease transmission.
Among several inventive NIDA-supported mHealth prevention research initiatives, one has patients recording their stress levels in electronic diaries on devices enabled for global positioning. The researchers will use the data to map the contours of risk in the patients’ environments and identify where prevention and treatment resources are needed most. A similar project is testing how well mobile devices can link locations with behaviors related to risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections among drug abusers along the United States-Mexico border.
NIDA first entered the field that would become mHealth in 1997, when the Institute supported a project that gave nicotine-dependent individuals hand-held devices to access antismoking messages whenever and wherever they felt a need. Soon after, researchers began using cell phones and interactive voice-response technology to assess relapse risk among crack cocaine abusers. No one at the time of these initial forays could have envisioned the vast potential that mHealth offers today, thanks to astonishing technological advances and the population’s embrace of the devices. Likewise, the mHealth of the future surely will outstrip today’s vision. As in 1997, NIDA is determined to remain in the forefront of these developments, fully exploiting technologies for effective, research-proven applications that reduce drug abuse and its health and social consequences.
Visit the NIDA website for tons of interesting and educational information on the Science of Drug Abuse and Addiction.
“Rehab with Dr Drew” – All New Episode Sunday Night
Catch an all new episode, Sunday October 28th at 8pm on Vh-1 and see a sneak peek of episode 8, “Facing the Past”, on Vh1.com
Prescription Drug Abuse… Treatment
Treating prescription drug addiction
Years of research have shown that addiction to any drug (illicit or prescribed) is a brain disease that can be treated effectively. Treatment must take into account the type of drug used and the needs of the individual. Successful treatment may need to incorporate several components, including detoxification, counseling, and sometimes the use of addiction medications. Multiple courses of treatment may be needed for the patient to make a full recovery.
The two main categories of drug addiction treatment are behavioral and pharmacological. Behavioral treatments help patients stop drug use by teaching them strategies to function without drugs, deal with cravings, avoid drugs and situations that could lead to drug use, and handle a relapse should it occur. When delivered effectively, behavioral treatments, such as individual counseling, group or family counseling, contingency management, and cognitivebehavioral therapies, also can help patients improve their personal relationships and their ability to function at work and in the community.
Although a behavioral or pharmacological approach alone may be sufficient for treating some patients, research shows that a combined approach may be best.
Some addictions, such as opioid addiction, can be treated with medications. These pharmacological treatments counter the effects of the drug on the brain and behavior, and can be used to relieve withdrawal symptoms, help overcome drug cravings, or treat an overdose. Although a behavioral or pharmacological approach alone may be sufficient for treating some patients, research shows that a combined approach may be best
