Trends in Opioid Use Disorder in the Veterans Health Administration, 2005-2022.

Importance: Given the personal and social burdens of opioid use disorder (OUD), understanding time trends in OUD prevalence in large patient populations is key to planning prevention and treatment services.

Objective: To examine trends in the prevalence of OUD from 2005 to 2022 overall and by age, sex, and race and ethnicity.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This serial cross-sectional study included national Veterans Health Administration (VHA) electronic medical record data from the VHA Corporate Data Warehouse.

Access to mental health support, unmet need and preferences among adolescents during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has had widespread effects on adolescent mental health. However, little is known about support-seeking, unmet need and preferences for mental health care among adolescents.

Methods: The Youth Development Instrument (YDI) is a school-administered survey of adolescents (N = 1928, mean age = 17.

Early Career Training in Addiction Medicine: A Qualitative Study with Health Professions Trainees Following a Specialized Training Program in a Canadian Setting.

There has been a notable deficiency in the implementation of addiction science in clinical practice and many healthcare providers feel unprepared to treat patients with substance use disorders (SUD) following training. However, the perceptions of addiction medicine training by learners in health professions have not been fully investigated. This qualitative study explored perceptions of prior training in SUD care among early-career trainees enrolled in Addiction Medicine fellowships and electives in Vancouver, Canada.

Trends in Prescriptions for Non-opioid Pain Medications Among U.S. Adults With Moderate or Severe Pain, 2014-2018.

As opioid prescribing has declined, it is unclear how the landscape of prescription pain treatment across the U.S. has changed.

Prospective effects of loneliness on frequency of alcohol and marijuana use.

Background: Loneliness is a widespread problem, with demonstrated negative health effects. However, prospective data on the relationship between loneliness and problematic substance use are lacking, and few studies have examined specific commonplace substances, such as alcohol and cannabis. This study used prospective data from a community sample of US adults with problematic alcohol or cannabis use to examine whether loneliness was a predictor of subsequent increased substance use.

Is Cannabis being used as a substitute for non-medical opioids by adults with problem substance use in the United States? A within-person analysis.

Background And Aims: Ecological studies have suggested that Cannabis legalization might have led to a decrease in opioid overdose deaths. Such studies do not provide information about whether individuals are substituting Cannabis for opioids at different points in time. The current study assessed the magnitude of the daily association between Cannabis and opioid use in individual adults with and without pain who use non-medical opioids.

Association of Depression With Past-Month Cannabis Use Among US Adults Aged 20 to 59 Years, 2005 to 2016.

Importance: Despite studies showing that repeated cannabis use may worsen depressive symptoms, the popular media increasingly presents cannabis as beneficial to mental health, and many members of the public view cannabis as beneficial for depression. Therefore, cannabis use among individuals with depression may be becoming more prevalent.

Objective: To examine the association of depression with past-month cannabis use among US adults and the time trends for this association from 2005 to 2016.

Development and Evaluation of the Online Addiction Medicine Certificate: Free Novel Program in a Canadian Setting.

Background: Despite the enormous bur-den of disease attributable to drug and alcohol addiction, there remain major challenges in implementing evi-dence-based addiction care and treatment modalities. This is partly because of a persistent lack of accessible, specialized training in addiction medicine. In response, a new online certificate in addiction medicine has been established in Vancouver, Canada, free of charge to participants globally.