Beyond Bullying: Transforming the Culture of Peer Abuse

Bullying needs to be understood and positioned as a form of child abuse – peer abuse. For too many people, bullying is a benign term. This article will include information collected from a wide-range of researchers and discussions with over 50,000 students that I have facilitated during the past twenty years. The content will focus on new morbidities related to bullying such as depression and suicide, obesity, eating disorders, food allergies, juvenile diabetes, truancy, and substance and alcohol abuse. Making a cultural change in our society will require identified Change Agents, along with recommendations for collaboration, policies, projects and legislation.

Women & drug abuse : you and your community can help.

"Printed 1994"--P. [12].

Preventing drug use among children and adolescents : a research-based guide /

"Printed March, 1997"--P. 4 of cover.

Epidemiologic trends in drug abuse : proceedings /

Issues for published in 2 vols.; v. 1 is highlights and executive summary; v. 2 is edited texts of specialized reports; <1999->, v. 2 is proceedings.

Substance-use disorders and psychological distress among police arrestees

Objectives: To determine the 12-month prevalence of substance-use disorders and psychological morbidity in an Australian arrestee population. Design: Cross-sectional descriptive study. Participants and setting: 288 police arrestees at the Brisbane City Police Watch House in February and March 2001. Outcome measures: Prevalence of drug and alcohol disorders; psychological caseness according to the 28-item General Health Questionnaire; demographics and index offences. Results: 86% of the arrestees had at least one substance-use disorder; most had multiple disorders. More than 80% were substance dependent. The predominant substances used were amphetamines, marijuana, opioids and alcohol. 82% of the men and 94% of the women were suffering significant psychological distress. Conclusions: Development of services for detoxification and treatment of this population is a pressing need. The findings provide crucial information for the planning and implementation of drug courts and court diversion systems.

Substance misuse in first-episode psychosis: 15-month prospective follow-up study

Background Well-designed prospective studies of substance misuse in first-episode psychosis can improve our understanding of the risks associated with comorbid substance misuse and psychosis. Aims To examine the potential effects of substance misuse on in-patient admission and remission and relapse of positive symptoms in first-episode psychosis. Method The study was a prospective 15-month follow-up investigation of 103 patients with first-episode psychosis recruited from three mental health services. Results Substance misuse was independently associated with increased risk of in-patient admission, relapse of positive symptoms and shorter time to relapse of positive symptoms after controlling for potential confounding factors, Substance misuse was not associated with remission or time to remission of positive symptoms. Heavy substance misuse was associated with increased risk of in-patient admission, relapse and shorter time to relapse. Conclusions Substance misuse is an independent risk factor for a problematic recovery from first-episode psychosis.

A phenomenology of crack abuse

The aim of this dissertation is to identify, describe, and explain the common experiences defining the crack abuser's life-world. Its method is phenomenological. Using basic cybernetic premises, a neurophysiologically oriented phenomenological framework concerning the constitution of thoughts, memories, and perceptions is first written. The framework is designed to hypothetically represent the neuropathology of crack abuse within a perspective that prescinds and describes the constitution, flow, and interdependence of experience. After the framework is written, the dissertation outlines the neuro-psychopharmacology of crack abuse and delimits crack abusers as a specific group within the more general population of cocaine users. It then represents the neuropathology of crack abuse within its phenomenological framework and uses the first-person accounts of forty-two crack dependents to actualize a phenomenological sketch of the crack abuser's life-world. The ethnographies afford the possibility of writing a “thick” description of the crack abuser's daily life—one that communicates the substance, order, and subjective and cultural dimensions of the dependent's defining experiences. ^ The dissertation's goals are successfully realized. The framework written and the ethnographies recorded and transcribed, the dissertation is able to identify, describe, and to a certain extent explain some of the common experiences defining the crack abusers life-world. The dissertation concludes that the crack abuser's life-world is organized around three primary and four secondary experiences. His primary experiences include: (1) an almost complete, yet fleeting, satisfaction of the ego's innate insufficiency and sublime, erotic-like stimulation of its core, (2) a fundamental inclination and expansion of the uniquely oriented euphoria-dysphoria dynamic that vivifies and orients the flow of consciousness, and (3) a change in the ego's innate structure. His secondary experiences include: (a) a characteristic aiming of projects, actions, and conduct toward the procurement and consumption of crack, (b) a denigration in the hold of legitimations and institutionalizations on the thematic field, (c) a strict alignment and a contraction in the scope of logical types pointing to the salient experiences within the stock of knowledge, and (d) for some crack abusers, ontological insecurity, despair, and exhaustion. ^