BACKGROUND/AIMS This study compares illegal drug and alcohol use behaviors between medical and nonmedical users of prescription opioids (PO) and nonmedical users with distinct motives to use. METHOD An ethically approved cross-sectional study (2010) was conducted on a representative sample of private university students (n = 570), using a self-filled anonymous questionnaire. RESULTS About 2...

Smith and Farah (2011) presented a scholarly review of critical areas related to their intriguing title "Are Prescription Stimulants 'Smart Pills'?" We contend that they accomplished the main goal of the article, to get the facts straight about possible cognitive enhancement via the nonmedical use of stimulant drugs by individuals without a diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder ...

OBJECTIVE To quantify the potential impact of reductions in positive subjective measures from human abuse liability studies on real-world rates of nonmedical use of prescription drugs and associated healthcare resource utilization and costs. DESIGN Positive subjective endpoints "overall drug liking," in-the-moment "drug liking," and "drug high" Emaxs (peak effects) were recorded from publishe...

CONTEXT Proliferation of the use of psychopharmacologic drugs for the treatment of individuals with attention and behavior disorders has promoted discussion of the illicit use of such drugs to enhance academic performance. Previous research has focused on the use of such drugs by undergraduate students; however, inquiry into the nonmedical use of prescription stimulants by medical students is w...

OBJECTIVES Our goal was to determine the annual direct medical and nonmedical costs for the care of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) using data from a large cohort database in Japan. METHODS Direct medical costs [out of pocket to hospitals and pharmacies and for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)] and nonmedical costs (caregiving, transportation, self-help devices, house modi...

OBJECTIVE To determine patterns and knowledge of nonmedical use of stimulants among a sample of college students. DESIGN Completion of an anonymous survey consisting of 23 questions designed to explore college student use of medications intended to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. SETTING A private liberal arts college in New England. PARTICIPANTS Three hundred forty-seven ...

Rates of overdose deaths involving prescription drugs increased rapidly in the United States during 1999-2006. However, such mortality data do not portray the morbidity associated with prescription drug overdoses. Data from emergency department (ED) visits can represent this morbidity and can be accessed more quickly than mortality data. To better understand recent national trends in drug-relat...

BACKGROUND Nonmedical prescription drug use is prevalent among young adults, yet little is known about modifiable determinants of use. We examined whether maternal-offspring attachment reported at mean age 21 was associated with nonmedical prescription opioid use at mean age 26, and investigated whether a history of depressive symptoms and substance use played a role in associations between mat...

Although medical humanities courses taught by teachers from nonmedical backgrounds are not unusual now, few studies have compared the outcome of medical humanities courses facilitated by physicians to that by teaching assistants majored in the liberal arts. The objectives of this study were to (1) analyze the satisfaction of medical students with medical humanities problem-based learning (PBL) ...

BACKGROUND Nonmedical prescription drug use (NMPDU) refers to the self-treatment of a medical condition using medication without a prescriber's authorization as well as use to achieve euphoric states. This article reports data from a cross-national investigation of NMPDU in five European Countries, with the aim to understand the prevalence and characteristics of those engaging in NMPDU across t...