Novel Psychoactive Substance Use and Psychological Trauma: A Multimethodological Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Authors discuss the connections between novel psychoactive substance (NPS) use and psychological trauma. The transition from classical substances to NPS, a paradigm change, poses a challenge for the treatment systems. Objective: Research evidence suggests difficulties in emotion regulation and trauma-related NPS-use. Authors explore some demographic and psychopathological characteristics related to such findings and examine the connections between emotion regulation deficiency and the choice of substance. METHOD: This study uses a methodological triangulation of a biologically identified sample to confirm NPS use, a survey method to describe users' socioeconomic characteristics, and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) subscales to study dysfunctions in emotion regulation. RESULTS: Participants (77 patients) were mainly polydrug users. The transgenerational transfer of substance use was a salient feature, but material deprivation was not characteristic of the entire sample. NPS use was not connected to certain psychopathological characteristics the way classical substance use was. More than half of the respondents had elevated scores on MMPI-2 Demoralization (RCd) and Dysfunctional Negative Emotions (RC7) scales. Nearly half of them also scored high on Neuroticism/Negative Emotionality (NEGE). CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that NPS use in the context of polydrug use is connected to psychological trauma and emotion regulation deficiency, but the MMPI-2 scales to assess emotional dysfunctions are not connected to a particular type of NPS.

[Novel psychoactive substance users' highly valenced life story episodes: A content analysis].

INTRODUCTION: Novel psychoactive substance use (NPS) has proven a challenge for the domestic addiction treatment system. In the first few years, studies focused on types of substances and prevalence. Recently social and cultu ral background, personality/identity issues and experiences of NPS users have been thematised in scientific studies. Our study is connected to the latter tradition. METHODS: Our study comprised a questionnaire on sociodemographic factors, and a mixed method content analysis of highly valenced episodes of life interviews, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. We analysed the data obtained from 42 NPS users entering treatment. NPS use was confirmed by preceding drug tests. We used descriptive statistical methods to analyse questionnaire data, and employed paired-sample T-test to analyse the data from quanti tative content analysis. The text corpus (personal texts) of the Hungarian National Text Resources was selected as baseline to compare percentages. In our qualitative analysis, we outlined a conceptual network on high point and low point episodes of the life story. RESULTS: Extreme poverty and deprivation was not characteristic of the current sample as a whole. Our content ana - lysis supported previous results on the highly self-destructive nature of novel psychoactive substance use. Major results of the content analysis of highly valenced low point texts were experiences of entrapment, failure, victimisation and never-ending troubles. The use of function words, especially in low point texts, bore marked resemblance with "negative code" frequencies, also indicating a self-destructive attitude. Parallel, elements related to inevitability have increased significantly, while words referring to defence (generalizations and distancing) decreased. CONCLUSION: We interpret the results in terms of the arrested flight/cry of pain model. The results support and add to the conclusions of previous studies on the highly self-destructive nature of NPS-use and may introduce new aspects into treatment. The study is persuasive on the relevance of content analysis in clinical areas.

Entrapment and escape: Exploring the relationship between suicide and emigration in a post-communist country.

BACKGROUND: Suicide rate in Hungary was nearly the highest in the world in the decades preceding the transition of the social system. Shortly after the transition in 1989, a radical decrease in fatal suicides occurred, parallel with a marked increase in emigration. METHODS: We analyzed the data published by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office to detect if there was an association between the remarkable drop in suicide rates and the changes in emigration rates from 1995 to 2019. RESULTS: The results of a brief statistical analysis on the correlation between suicide rate and emigration confirmed a strong negative relationship (r = -.855, p = .00). For more precise results, we applied linear regression analysis, which showed that the emigration rate predicted 73.2% of suicide rate variances with a high predictive value (ß = -.983). CONCLUSION: The study provides a possible explanation through a phenomenological analysis on major life transformations. Relating the arrested flight/cry of pain theory, the theory of rites of passage and double-bind communication resulted a comprehensive and coherent, but not exhaustive explanation on the relationship between suicide and emigration.