Over-the-counter analgesic usage: associations with attentional biases in young women.

The use of over-the-counter analgesics (OTCA) has been found to alter various aspects of emotional processing and has been linked to increased anxiety and depression symptoms. Attentional bias is an aspect of emotional processing that is closely related to anxiety and depression. Although OTCA and attentional bias have both been linked to anxiety and depression, the potential links between OTCA usage and attentional bias are not yet investigated. The present study aimed to determine whether the frequency of OTCA usage is associated with differences in attentional bias by comparing response-based measures of attentional bias in 62 women aged 19-30 years. The findings showed that the small group reporting high OTCA usage demonstrated more orientation avoidance to fearful stimuli than those reporting no or low usage. Based on these preliminary findings, further research on attentional bias and its relationship to high OTCA usage is recommended.

Associations between over-the-counter analgesics usage and symptoms of anxiety and depression in adolescents: a network analysis.

BACKGROUND: The use of over-the-counter analgesics (OTCA) is common among adolescents and has been linked with increased symptoms of anxiety and depression. However, little is known about which specific symptoms are most strongly connected to OTCA usage. The current study assessed which anxiety and depression symptoms were most closely associated with OTCA usage in a large sample of adolescents and examined whether this differed across genders. METHOD: The present study was based on data from 626,581 participants from the Ungdata survey in Norway. Associations between OTCA and anxiety and depression symptoms were examined using network analysis. Non-regularized partial-correlation networks were constructed to estimate the conditional dependent relations between the use of OTCA and symptoms while controlling for pain. Gender-specific networks were created for comparison. RESULTS: OTCA usage was associated with most symptoms, even after controlling for pain, with the strongest associations with "sleep problems", "stiff or tense", "everything is a struggle" and "suddenly scared". There were some gender differences, showing that "sleep problems" and "hopeless" were more strongly related to OTCA usage in females, whereas "stiff or tense" was more strongly related to OTCA usage in males. CONCLUSION: Overall, the somatic symptoms of anxiety and depression displayed the strongest associations with OTCA usage. When examining the gender-specific networks, both showed similar trends, although males exhibited slightly stronger associations between OTCA usage and somatic symptoms.