Implicit motive profile of treatment-seeking opiate users: high affiliation and low achievement.

Research on basic human motives (achievement, affiliation, and power) encoded at the emotional level recently returned to the forefront of scientific research. To date, there are only a few studies on the pattern of implicit motives of substance users, so the present study examined opiate users participating in methadone maintenance treatment (N = 80) along these dimensions, comparing them to 40 non-substance users. Participants were asked to create stories on the basis of the pictures of the Thematic Apperception Test. The stories were analyzed using the content analysis method of David Winter (1991). Like other substance user groups, opiate-dependent persons used less achievement and more affiliation notions in creating stories, while there was no significant difference between the two groups concerning power notions. The results proved to be independent of the presence of anxiety and depression symptoms, despite substance users reporting higher levels of these, and suggest that motivational factors are worth considering in treatment planning.

Gambling in Western and Eastern Europe: the example of Hungary.

The history of gambling in post-socialist countries is noticeably different from that of other countries in Europe. The goal of this study was therefore twofold: Firstly, to systematically review all European epidemiological studies related to excessive gambling in the general adult population, and secondly, to provide an overview of the state of gambling in Hungary based on the first ever nationwide representative survey, setting the results against the backdrop of the earlier European studies. A systematic review was carried out of European gambling studies which focus on a representative adult general population. Hungarian data was obtained from the National Survey on Addiction Problems in Hungary general adult population survey (N = 2,710). Pathological gambling was measured by the South Oaks Gambling Screen. Lifetime prevalence of excessive gambling (problem and pathological gambling) in the general adult population of European countries varies between 1.1% (Italy and Spain) and 6.5% (Estonia). In Hungary, the prevalence of problem gambling is 1.9%, with pathological gambling at 1.4%. The socio-demographic characteristics of the results are similar to those of other European countries. Using epidemiological data from the general adult populations of two post-socialist nations, it was possible to compare the results with data from 12 other European countries. Based on the data available, the extremely rapid liberation of the gambling market in the post-socialist countries has led to a similarly swift escalation in associated gambling problems.

[Problematic and pathologic gambling in Hungary: the Hungarian version and use of the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS-HU)]. / Problémás és patológiás szerencsejáték Magyarországon: a South Oaks szerencsejáték kérdoiv magyar verziójának (SOGS-HU) hazai alkalmazása.

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Gambling is a form of entertainment with a history of thousand years that has a significant potential for development and has become a widely spread global industry recently. Excessive gambling can take the form of problem, or even pathological gambling. The South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) is the most common measure used for the assessment of problem and pathological gambling. The aim of our study was the development and psychometric analysis of the Hungarian version of the instrument, and its verification on a representative population sample. METHOD: The administration of the instrument was conducted within the frame of the National Household Survey on Addiction Problems, where 2710 persons were interviewed from Hungarian population between 18 and 64 years. RESULTS: The psychometric properties of SOGS-HU are adequate. 65.3% of the respondents had ever gambled. The most popular games are lottery and other number draw games. According to the data obtained by SOGS 1.9 % of the sample was considered to be problem gambler, and 1.4 % of the sample was considered to be pathological gambler. In both groups the proportion of man was higher, while additional risk factors were lower income, lower expected level of education and legal / illegal substance use. CONCLUSION: Based on these results Hungary can be found in the middle-rank of Europe regarding the prevalence of problem and pathological gambling.

Association between Novelty Seeking of opiate-dependent patients and the catechol-O-methyltransferase Val(158)Met polymorphism.

BACKGROUND: Candidate genes of the dopaminergic system have been reported as key elements in shaping human temperament. Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) plays a vital role in dopamine inactivation, and the Val(158)Met single nucleotide polymorphism (rs4680) in its gene has been recently associated with the Novelty Seeking (NS) temperament scale of the Temperament and Character Inventory in studies of healthy adults, as well as methamphetamine abusers. METHOD: Our goal was to examine the association between temperament dimensions of the Temperament and Character Inventory and the COMT Val(158)Met variation in a Hungarian sample of 117 heroin-dependent patients and 124 nondependent controls. RESULTS: Case-control analysis did not show any significant difference in allele or genotype distributions. However, dimensional approach revealed an association between the COMT Val(158)Met and NS (P = .01): both controls and opiate users with Met/Met genotypes showed higher NS scores compared to those with the Val allele. The NS scores are also significantly higher among opiate users; however, no interaction was found between group status and COMT genotype. CONCLUSION: Association of the COMT polymorphism and NS temperament scale has been shown for heroin-dependent patients and controls regardless of group status.

Confirmation of the three-factor model of the Assessing Emotions Scale (AES): verification of the theoretical starting point.

Several measures have been developed for the quantification of emotional intelligence. One widely applied method is the Assessing Emotions Scale, whose factor structure has attracted much scientific attention. The objective of the present study was to identify which of the previously suggested models are the most appropriate. By applying confirmatory factor analysis, we have tested the original one-, three-, four-, and six-factor solutions. Results confirmed the three-factor structure to be the most suitable solution. We suggest that the factors in this structure are better described by the labels "appraisal of emotions," "optimism and regulation of emotions," and "intrapersonal and interpersonal utilization of emotions." Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

[Types of pathological gamblers]. / A kóros játékszenvedély típusai.

BACKGROUND: Beginning with the end of the total and later on the partial state ban on gambling in Hungary, an increasingly intensive revival of gambling can be observed together with a widening scope of offers. Parallel to the growing popularity of controlled, social and recreational forms of gambling, the spread of excessive, problematic and pathological gambling requiring therapeutic intervention is also present. OBJECTIVE: Both from the perspective of research and clinical practice the following questions are raised. Whether there exist subtypes of problematic or pathological gamblers with specific personality characteristics and therefore needs for specific types of treatment, and if it is worth differentiating between gamblers according to their preferences towards specific types of gambling. RESULTS: One stream of research with the objective of finding subtypes of gambling examines pathological gamblers in general, independent of their gambling preferences. These authors describe subgroups with typical psychological characteristics and they present various possible functions of gambling. On the other hand, data is available supporting that persons with unlike dominant preferences towards different types of gambling can be characterized by dissimilar demographic and psychological indices as well. Authors in these studies present typologies created according to various different aspects in details. CONCLUSION: Based on studies aiming to create a typology of gambling addicted patients and discover their motives, we can assume that the escape gambler and the impulsive gambler types can most unequivocally be differentiated. Besides these, studies suggest the existence of two other types of gamblers; normal and ones seeking the experience of dissociation. On the personality characteristics of gamblers playing specific types of games, however, there is little data available yet.