"To me, it was Just a Vice". Stigma and Other Barriers to Gambling Treatment in Piedmont, Italy.

In Piedmont (northwestern Italy), as in the rest of the Western world, only a small percentage of the estimated problem gamblers (10-20%) turn to a treatment service to overcome their addiction issues. The study sought to gain a better understanding of the cultural factors that stand in the way of seeking help, thorough qualitative in-depth individual interviews with gamblers both in and out of treatment. A total of 30 interviews were conducted in three different health districts, most via video-call.

Variations in acceptability of heavy alcohol use and gender double standards across drinking cultures. A U.S.A. - Italy study.

Focus group data from 92 youths from Italy and the U.S.A.

Using Photovoice to understand physical and social living environment influence on adherence to diabetes.

Within the past several years, a considerable body of research on adherence to diabetes regimen has emerged in public health. However, the focus of the vast majority of these studies has been on the individual traits and attitudes affecting adherence. Still little is known on the role of the social and physical context in supporting or hindering diabetes self-management, particularly from a qualitative standpoint.

The gendered relationship with drunkenness among different generations in Mediterranean and Nordic countries.

The study adopts a qualitative comparative approach to better understand how different dimensions affect social norms regulating alcohol consumption. Female and male attitudes towards drunkenness were analysed on the basis of data from 27 focus groups involving a total of 166 participants from Italy, Finland and Sweden, grouped by age cohort (17-20 and 50-65 years) and educational level. Results suggest that gendered drinking norms may be affected more by the drinking culture than by the degree of gender equality, thus providing a possible explanation of why gender differences in drinking are not always consistent with broader gender inequalities.

A Mixed Methods Cross-Cultural Study to Compare Youth Drinking Cultures in Italy and the USA.

Aims: To compare the drinking cultures of youth in the USA and in Italy.

Method: Sequential explanatory mixed method design. Phase 1: Multigroup latent class analysis was used to identify subgroups of drinkers from samples of 424 (61.

Patterns of alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm among European university students.

Background: To compare patterns of alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm from a survey of university students sampled from universities in Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland.

Methods: A total of 2191 university students (70% female, 90% white ethnic group, age range 18-25) completed the survey. Participants completed measures of demographic variables (age, age of onset, ethnic group and sex) and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), which was the primary outcome.

A School-Based Program to Promote Well-Being in Preadolescents: Results From a Cluster Quasi-Experimental Controlled Study.

Diario della Salute [My Health Diary] is a school-based program designed to enhance the subjective well-being and health of 12- to 13-year-old students. We hypothesized that providing students with the social and emotional skills to fulfill their potential and deal with common developmental tasks of adolescence (e.g.

Depoliticising addiction: Who gets to speak in European press reporting, 1991-2011?

Aims: The article presents an analysis of sources of information employed in mainstream print media reporting on addiction problems in Finland, Italy and Poland in the 1990s and 2000s.

Method: A quantitative content analysis of frequency of different sources employed in articles in daily newspapers from Finland ( = 258), Italy ( = 296), and Poland ( = 212) from the years 1991, 1998 and 2011. Semantic units were coded in Atlas.

A Commentary on the Limits of Alcoholic Beverage Policies.

Providing one set of policy measures for all countries as if they were a single, homogeneous entity does not appear to be evidence-based, according to recent research on the effectiveness of alcoholic beverage control policies. Contextual and cultural determinants-social, economic, demographic, cultural and political-appear to be major factors of influencing change in drinking trends, drinking patterns and drinking-related harms. The variable interplay between contextual determinants and alcohol control policy measures implies diverse impacts on consumption and harm according to time, and to the different countries and groups of countries.

European longitudinal study on the relationship between adolescents' alcohol marketing exposure and alcohol use.

Background And Aims: This is the first study to examine the effect of alcohol marketing exposure on adolescents' drinking in a cross-national context. The aim was to examine reciprocal processes between exposure to a wide range of alcohol marketing types and adolescent drinking, controlled for non-alcohol branded media exposure.

Design: Prospective observational study (11-12- and 14-17-month intervals), using a three-wave autoregressive cross-lagged model.

Gender Differences in Heroin Addiction and Treatment: Results from the VEdeTTE Cohort.

Background: Gender differences strongly affect heroin addiction, from risk factors to patterns of consumption, access to treatments, and outcomes.

Objectives: To investigate gender differences in the VEdeTTE cohort of heroin addicts.

Methods: VEdeTTE is a cohort of 10,454 heroin users enrolled between 1998 and 2001 in 115 public drug treatment centres in Italy.

From criminals to celebrities: perceptions of "the addict" in the print press from four European countries from nineties to today.

The article reviews portrayals of "the addict" in press items from Italy, Finland, Poland, and The Netherlands. The dataset consists of 1,327 items from four national newspapers published in 1991, 1998, 2011. The portrayals varied according to country, period, and type of addiction problem.

The Italian politics of alcohol: The creation of a public arena at the end of the 20th century.

Background: Political concern with alcohol as a social problem arose in Italy only at the end of last century, when consumption and the death rate from alcohol-related causes had both been trending down for decades. The main aim of this case study is to investigate - applying Wiener's theoretical framework - the role of different stakeholders in the process that led to the approval of the first alcohol framework law in 2001.

Methods: Fourteen individual interviews with stakeholders were conducted, covering all the main topics involved in Italian alcohol policies.

Stakeholders' role in contemporary "substitute drug" prescribing policies in Italy.

This article, part of a comparative research project (WP2) funded by FP7 ALICE RAP, is based upon a review of literature and documents and 18 individual interviews with Italian national stakeholders (SHs) conducted in 2012. The goal was to identify the main shifts in opioid "substitution drug" treatment policies and understand the role played by different SHs during the last 30 years. The study confirms that opioid "substitution drug" treatment is a particularly suitable theme for improving knowledge in the field of SH analysis, even if results show that changes in policies are mainly due to external factors rather than to the action of SHs.

Alcohol consumption and quality of life among young adults: a comparison among three European countries.

The study aims to investigate the relationship between alcohol consumption and quality of life (QoL) on a representative sample of adults aged 25-34 living in France, Italy, and the Netherlands (4,841 subjects). The data was collected in 2008 using telephone interviews and analyzed with cluster analysis using Ward's method. Results show that the impact of alcohol consumption on QoL depends mainly on predominant consumption style and drinking culture that should be investigated further to identify protective factors.