The Substance Abuse Treatment Workforce of South Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to describe characteristics of substance abuse treatment counselors in the Republic of South Africa, including demographics, education, training, and job duties. Counselors recruited from 24 treatment centers completed a survey after signing informed consent. Counselors were primarily female (75%), racially diverse (36.

Cue reactivity in active pathological, abstinent pathological, and regular gamblers.

Twenty-one treatment-seeking pathological gamblers, 21 pathological gamblers in recovery, and 21 recreational gamblers watched two video-taped exciting gambling scenarios and an exciting roller-coaster control scenario while their arousal (heart rate and subjective excitement) and urge to gamble were being measured. The gamblers did not differ significantly in cue-elicited heart rate elevations or excitement. However, the active pathological gamblers reported significantly greater urges to gamble across all cues compared to the abstinent pathological gamblers and, with marginal significance (p = 0.

Sex differences in salivary cortisol in response to acute stressors among healthy participants, in recreational or pathological gamblers, and in those with posttraumatic stress disorder.

Sex differences in incidence and severity of some stress-related, neuropsychiatric disorders are often reported to favor men, suggesting that women may be more vulnerable to aberrant hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis responses to stress. In this review, we discuss several investigations that we, and others, have conducted assessing salivary cortisol as a measure of HPA function. We have examined basal cortisol among healthy men and women and also following acute exposure to stressors.

Gambling screens: does shortening the time frame affect their psychometric properties?

Gambling screening tools such as the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) and a DSM-IV Screen for Gambling Problems (NODS) developed by the National Opinion Research Council have psychometrically validated lifetime and past-year versions. As research questions often dictate shorter time intervals, researchers have adapted the time frames of these instruments to their specific purposes without examining whether changing the time frame affects the psychometric properties. In this study, 3-month versions of SOGS and NODS were administered to a sample of 80 pathological gamblers (59 men, 21 women, mean age 44) seeking treatment at a state-funded facility.

Relationship between Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire scores and clinic attendance among cocaine abusing, buprenorphine maintained outpatients.

With the recent approval of buprenorphine for the treatment of opiate dependence in the United States it has become important to develop an understanding of the factors that influence the likelihood of successful treatment outcomes when using buprenorphine. This study examined, in a convenience sample, the relationship between novelty-seeking behaviors, as determined by Cloninger's Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ), and attendance variables during participation in a buprenorphine-based treatment program for 21 heroin-dependent cocaine users that took place in the late 1990s. Approximately two-thirds of the participants were male and primarily African-American.