Predictors of Health in Substance Use Disorder Recovery: Economic Stability in Residential Aftercare Environments.

The exit from active substance use presents barriers to achieving and maintaining health, especially as individuals lack the economic resources to afford healthcare access. Treatment settings that strengthen resources may support stability in recovery and influence health. Analyzing a sample of recovery home residents over two years (N = 494), the current study assessed individually held resources (e.g., wages, employment) and the average economic conditions of a resident's house (e.g., house employment rate) to understand their association with self-reported health status. Employment status, but not wages or transportation access, was associated with reported health scores. The average employment rate of a recovery home was also positively correlated with the health of its residents. Results indicate the need to address employment and other economic issues which plague recovering individuals. Community aftercare settings may offer such a pathway through affordable housing, employment opportunities, and supportive relationships.

"A lot of moving parts": Recovery home challenges linking and housing individuals with criminal legal system involvement.

INTRODUCTION: There are high rates of substance use disorder (SUD) among people released from carceral settings and, upon release, many of these people also face unstable housing situations, posing challenges to connecting with resources to facilitate SUD recovery. Recovery homes provide a temporary sober living environment for those seeking both SUD recovery and transition back to the community after carceral release. However, successful recovery home placement for this population can prove difficult, and there is a need for research to identify ways to overcome them. METHODS: The current qualitative study seeks to understand barriers to recovery home access for people leaving carceral settings and identify potential best practices for overcoming these barriers from the perspective of recovery home directors. The study conducted semi-structured interviews at two data collection points with eight recovery home directors from sites participating in a housing linkage and placement intervention pilot. The research team used qualitative software to identify and organize directors' experiences and practices in housing and supporting this population. RESULTS: Recovery home directors identified significant barriers to linkage from carceral settings, including difficulties communicating and coordinating placement with potential residents while still incarcerated. Interviews also revealed approaches recovery home directors take to improve recovery home placement, such as sharing information and resources with carceral settings prior to release and helping residents avoid reincarceration by managing relationships with court agents and parole. CONCLUSION: Recovery resident directors have considerable insight into the most significant placement challenges faced by recovery homes upon carceral release as well as experience with potential solutions for overcoming them. Directors can be the key to direct seamless support and continuity of care for criminal legal system involved individuals through coordination with jails, prisons, and other community resources. Directors can also play a significant role in the successful completion of probation and parole by helping residents avoid further issues with the legal system. These directors view working cooperatively with residents as an effective approach to ensuring clients adhere to court orders and are successful in recovery and reentry.

Workforce outcomes among substance use peer supports and their contextual determinants: A scoping review protocol.

Background: Peer recovery support services are a promising approach for improving harm reduction, treatment, and recovery-related outcomes for people who have substance use disorders. However, unique difficulties associated with the role may put peer recovery support staff (i.e., peers) at high risk for negative workforce outcomes, including burnout, vicarious trauma, and compassion fatigue, which impact one's personal recovery journey. Little is known about the extent to which peers experience such negative outcomes or the influence the service setting context has upon them. This scoping review aims to describe the nature and extent of research evidence on peers' workforce outcomes and how these outcomes might differ across service settings. Methods: A scoping review will be conducted with literature searches conducted in PsycINFO®, (EBSCO), Embase® (EBSCO), CINAHL® (EBSCO), Web of Science™ (Clarivate), and Google Scholar databases for relevant articles discussing US-based research and published in English from 1 January 1999 to 1 August 2023. The study will include peer-reviewed and grey-literature published materials describing the experiences of peers participating in recovery support services and harm reduction efforts across a variety of service settings. Two evaluators will independently review the abstracts and full-text articles. We will perform a narrative synthesis, summarizing and comparing the results across service settings. Conclusions: This review will assess the state of the literature on peer workforce-related outcomes and how outcomes might vary by service setting context. Exploration will include individual characteristics of peers that moderate workforce outcomes, and workforce outcomes that mediate personal recovery outcomes. Results will inform the field regarding future directions for research in this area. Systematic review registration: Submitted to Open Science Framework, August 22nd, 2023.

Recovery resources for college students: Leveraging web scraping to unveil current estimates.

OBJECTIVE: Growing recognition of the importance of addressing substance use among emerging adults has led to a rapid expansion of recovery services on college campuses. However, existing estimates on collegiate recovery programs or communities (CRPs/Cs) and other services are outdated or lack rigor, leaving the extent of these resources unclear. This study aimed to fill this gap in our understanding by providing current estimates of recovery-related resources. METHOD: Utilizing the Python web scraping library BeautifulSoup, we gathered a large sample of ".edu"-hosted webpages (N = 995) with references to recovery services (e.g., "collegiate recovery", "peer support"). Eligible webpages (n = 552) were screened by a team of 11 reviewers to extract information on these services. RESULTS: During extraction, we identified 270 institutions that advertised on-campus recovery services for students. Of these institutions, 176 advertised formal CRPs/Cs. A majority of CRPs/Cs (n = 164) advertised mutual aid meetings and sober/drug-free social activities (n = 138), while only 83 advertised drop-in centers. Relatively few historically Black colleges or universities (n = 5), Hispanic-serving institutions (n = 21), or native-serving institutions (n = 0) hosted recovery services. CONCLUSIONS: On-campus services to support recovery have greatly expanded since previous estimates, but gaps may exist in the services provided by these programs. By providing an updated estimate and examining service uniformity, this study can aid in future expansion and standardization efforts to support students in recovery. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Learning with conviction: Exploring the relationship between criminal legal system involvement and substance use and recovery outcomes for students in collegiate recovery programs.

This study examines the association of criminal legal system involvement and age with substance use and academic related outcomes among students involved in collegiate recovery programs in the US. We examined 435 students in collegiate recovery using a national survey of college students. We computed differences between non-system-involved, system-involved with no incarceration history, and formerly incarcerated participants on relevant substance use and recovery-related outcomes. The results provide evidence that there are significant differences between those system-involved and those who are not. Specifically, we found significant differences across the outcomes of recovery capital, quality of life, hours worked per week, and substance use disorder symptoms, but after controlling for relevant covariates, only the differences between hours worked (non-system involved and system involved < formerly incarcerated) and substance use disorder symptoms (non-system involved < system involved and formerly incarcerated) remained significant. The study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that nearly half of the collegiate students in recovery in this sample have legal system-involvement and a third have been incarcerated. Further, interventions for collegiate recovery programs may need to be adjusted to account for legal system involvement among their members.

Drinking to cope and coping strategies in Deaf/Hard of hearing college students.

INTRODUCTION: Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students experience unique stressors as a minority linguistic and cultural group that may contribute to problematic substance and alcohol use behavior. Proper coping strategies may be one protective factor to avoid reliance on alcohol as a means to reduce stress. METHODS: The current study compared the endorsement of coping strategies by DHH students and hearing individuals and their relationship to drinking to cope behavior. Data was collected among DHH (n = 126) and hearing students (n = 349) at a large university. RESULTS: While these two groups did not differ in their levels of problematic drinking behavior, there were differences observed in drinking to cope motives as well as in the levels of coping styles used. DHH students were found to endorse greater levels of emotion-oriented and task-oriented coping than hearing students. Drinking to cope motivations were also higher for DHH students, particularly those who endorsed greater emotion focused coping. CONCLUSIONS: Interventions and educational efforts involving coping skills is a potentially important area of focus for the DHH student population. Further implications for understanding drinking behavior in this population are discussed.

A substance user-self fit perception increases identification as a user of the substance.

We tested whether greater identification as a user of a substance (i.e., perceived general associations between oneself and use of the substance, the group of people who use the substance, and/or the substance itself) results from a theorized source-perceived fit between one's own identity and one's perception of the identity of being a user of the substance. We also tested whether this effect is stronger the more the group of people who use the substance is perceived as an entity and the more the prototypical user of the substance is perceived as having a favorable identity. We conducted two correlational and two (preregistered) experimental investigations of drinker identity and marijuana user identity. In all studies, substance user identity was positively associated with substance user-self fit perception. In both correlational studies, this relationship was stronger the more the group of people who use the substance was perceived as an entity. In the drinker identity correlational study, this relationship was also stronger the more it was perceived that the prototypical drinker has a favorable identity. A substance user-self fit perception could be addressed to reduce identification as a user of the substance in efforts to prevent hazardous use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).