It will be interesting to watch the Catholic church wrestle with the ethics of needle exchange.

Two stories from recent news:This NPR story reports that antipsychotics are Medicaid's largest drug expense. That's astonishing.A friend sent this story on the potential for harm when people without severe depression are prescribed antidepressants:Half of patients do not respond when they are given the medications, which can be powerful tool in helping the depressed to … Continue reading Psychotropic prescribing

The APA is planning to eliminate substance dependence and substance abuse from the DSM-5 and is planning to replace them with "[insert drug name]-use disorder". Here are the proposed alcohol-use disorder criteria.They propose severity specifiers, which is interesting. However, at first glance, I'm concerned about putting abuse and dependence on the same continuum, though I … Continue reading Substance-Related Disorders | APA DSM-5

A pretty intuitive finding. That domestic violence is more severe when alcohol is present.

Join Together reports:Dutch teens who were allowed to drink alcohol at home drank more outside the home than their peers and -- along with other teens who drank -- were at increased risk of developing alcohol problems, according to researchers from Radboud University Nijmegen.The study authors tracked 428 Dutch families with two children ages 13-15. … Continue reading Study Says Drinking with Your Kids Doesn’t Prevent Abuse

Slate has a couple of dispatches on "Vancouver's experiment with helping addicts get high"A commentary accuses opponents of "contempt for science" I don't oppose harm reduction but, like this blogger, I see no reason why a recovery orientation could not be introduced in every harm reduction service.The zeal for insite and contempt for critics make … Continue reading Injection center coverage

New Drug Policy Approach Focuses on the Vital Role of Recovery. See page 2.

2010 Federal Budget Boosts Funding for Mental Health and Substance Abuse Programs

From Addiction:ABSTRACTRationale Indices of negative affect, such as depression, have been implicated in stress-induced pathways to alcohol relapse. Empirically supported continuing care resources, such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), emphasize reducing negative affect to reduce relapse risk, but little research has been conducted to examine putative affective mechanisms of AA's effects.Methods Using lagged, controlled, hierarchical linear … Continue reading AA and depression