Long term Suboxone™ emotional reactivity as measured by automatic detection in speech.

Addictions to illicit drugs are among the nation's most critical public health and societal problems. The current opioid prescription epidemic and the need for buprenorphine/naloxone (Suboxone®; SUBX) as an opioid maintenance substance, and its growing street diversion provided impetus to determine affective states ("true ground emotionality") in long-term SUBX patients. Toward the goal of effective monitoring, we utilized emotion-detection in speech as a measure of "true" emotionality in 36 SUBX patients compared to 44 individuals from the general population (GP) and 33 members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Other less objective studies have investigated emotional reactivity of heroin, methadone and opioid abstinent patients. These studies indicate that current opioid users have abnormal emotional experience, characterized by heightened response to unpleasant stimuli and blunted response to pleasant stimuli. However, this is the first study to our knowledge to evaluate "true ground" emotionality in long-term buprenorphine/naloxone combination (Suboxone™). We found in long-term SUBX patients a significantly flat affect (p<0.01), and they had less self-awareness of being happy, sad, and anxious compared to both the GP and AA groups. We caution definitive interpretation of these seemingly important results until we compare the emotional reactivity of an opioid abstinent control using automatic detection in speech. These findings encourage continued research strategies in SUBX patients to target the specific brain regions responsible for relapse prevention of opioid addiction.

An evidence-based toolset to capture, measure and assess emotional health.

We present: (1) an automated telephone check-in system to capture emotional health, based on automatic emotion classification, crowd-sourcing, and the experience sampling method; (2) a method that combines acoustic-based and perception-based emotion classifiers to maximize the likelihood of correctly identifying the emotion in a speech recording; (3) an evidence-based toolkit to measure and assess emotional health; and (4) the results of three experimental trials held in 2010 and 2011: (a) English speaking members of Alcoholics Anonymous, (b) English and French speaking general population, and (c) English speaking Opioid addicts undergoing Suboxone maintenance treatment. Emotional health can be defined as the ability to express emotions, identify one's own emotions, relate to other people's emotions, and to live life with predominantly positive emotions. Emotional health plays a major role in addiction treatment and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).