News by Subject Social & Behavior

Children whose parents regularly smoke or vape marijuana may experience viral respiratory infections, such as the common cold, more frequently than those whose parents do not smoke, according to a study published in the journal Pediatric Research.

Lonely, older adults are nearly twice as likely to use opioids to ease pain and two-and-a-half times more likely to use sedatives and anti-anxiety medications, putting themselves at risk for drug dependency, impaired attention, falls and other accidents, and further cognitive impairment, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco.

As opioid overdose deaths rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, people seeking treatment for opioid addiction had to wait nearly twice as long to begin methadone treatment in the United States than in Canada, a new Yale study has shown.

Wearable devices can detect people's stress, according to new Washington State University research, opening potential new interventions for people with addictions. In a paper in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, a WSU research team found that wearable wristbands measure physiological responses to stress in real-time and real-world situations, providing a potential method to help people avoid slipping back into old behaviors.

A Canadian study reveals that lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are more likely than heterosexual youth to increase their use of cannabis following an increase in their symptoms of depression.

A new study by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers of more the 400,000 Medicare patients taking medications for insomnia found that the risk of death is increased when either benzodiazepines or "z-drugs" are taken with opioids.

More than 75% of women with Opioid Use Disorder report having had an unintended pregnancy, but they are less likely to use effective contraception compared to women who do not use drugs. Results from a multi-year trial found that a two-part intervention featuring co-located contraceptive services in opioid treatment programs and financial incentives could offer an effective solution.

High-dose buprenorphine therapy, provided under emergency department care, is safe and well tolerated in people with opioid use disorder experiencing opioid withdrawal symptoms, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) through the Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative, or the NIH HEAL Initiative.

Combined perceptions of the risk and availability of cannabis influence the risk of cannabis use more than perceived risk and perceived availability alone, according to a new Columbia study. Researchers observed that those who perceived cannabis as low-risk and available were more likely to report using the drug in the past year and almost daily compared to those individuals who perceived cannabis as high-risk and unavailable. This is the first study to consider the joint effects of perceived risk and perceived availability.

A new systematic review and meta-analysis has found that people who use cannabis are disproportionately more likely to initiate opioid use and engage in problematic patterns of use than people who do not use cannabis. But the quality of the evidence for this finding is low.