Approximately 80% of children served by child welfare agencies have parents who abuse or are dependent on alcohol or illicit drugs. Despite the devastating effects on children from living in substance abusing families, child protective service practitioners have limited options available to assist these families. The Parenting in Recovery program was created to address the needs of substance-ab...

Substance abuse and welfare reform are among the nation's highest priorities, and research that examines linkages between the two is of extreme importance to both government policy and the community. Welfare reform will have serious implications for substance abusers as well as for the various professionals who treat them and work to move their clients into functional recovery and self-sufficie...

The relation between specific therapy techniques and treatment outcome was examined for 2 empirically supported treatments for adolescent substance abuse: individual cognitive-behavioral therapy and multidimensional family therapy. Participants were 51 inner-city, substance-abusing adolescents receiving outpatient psychotherapy within a larger randomized trial. One session per case was evaluate...

OBJECTIVE To examine prevalence rates and psychosocial correlates of clonidine use in a sample of opiate-dependent pregnant women. METHODS Clonidine use was assessed in 90 treatment-seeking, pregnant, opiate-abusing women using both self-report and urinalysis toxicology. Clonidine-positive and -negative subjects were compared for selected demographic, substance use, and psychosocial measures....

BACKGROUND Cocaine use during pregnancy has many deleterious effects on both the mother and the fetus, including the following: preterm labor (< 37 weeks' gestation), congenital anomalies, intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR), abruptio placenta, low-birth-weight infants (< 2500 g), neonatal death, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Potentially catastrophic maternal outcomes include a pr...

An increased risk of HIV-1 associated dementia (HAD) has been observed in patients abusing methamphetamine (METH). Since both HIV viral proteins (gp120, Tat) and METH induce oxidative stress, drug abusing patients are at a greater risk of oxidative stress-induced damage. The objective of this study was to determine if N-acetylcysteine amide (NACA) protects the blood brain barrier (BBB) from oxi...

AIM The aim of the documentation of this clinical case is to make clinicians aware of "meth mouth" and the medical risks associated with this serious condition. BACKGROUND Methamphetamine is a very addictive, powerful stimulant that increases wakefulness and physical activity and can produce other effects such as cardiac dysrhythmias, hypertension, hallucinations, and violent behavior. Dental...

OBJECTIVE We sought to examine the relation between cannabis abuse and the symptomatic course of recent-onset schizophrenia and related disorders. DESIGN A prospective cohort study over a year using monthly Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale assessments. PARTICIPANTS Cannabis-abusing patients (n = 24) were compared with nonabusers (n = 69). Eleven patients were mild and 13 were heavy cannabis-a...

The objective of the present study was to examine allelic prevalence of the D2 dopamine receptor (DRD2) gene in male cocaine-dependent (CD) Caucasian (non-Hispanic) subjects and to determine the relationship of DRD2 alleles to family history and selected behavioral measures. The prevalence of the A1 allele in CD subjects (n = 53) was 50.9%. It was significantly higher than either the 16.0% prev...