How to Do Things With Words

Attachment--and loss.

Emotion and Adaptation

The measurement of meaning

The self-medication hypothesis of addictive disorders derives primarily from clinical observations of patients with substance use disorders. Individuals discover that the specific actions or effects of each class of drugs relieve or change a range of painful affect states. Self-medication factors occur in a context of self-regulation vulnerabilities--primarily difficulties in regulating affects, self-esteem, relationships, and self-care. Persons with substance use disorders suffer in the extreme with their feelings, either being overwhelmed with painful affects or seeming not to feel their emotions at all. Substances of abuse help such individuals to relieve painful affects or to experience or control emotions when they are absent or confusing. Diagnostic studies provide evidence that variously supports and fails to support a self-medication hypothesis of addictive disorders. The cause-consequence controversy involving psychopathology and substance use/abuse is reviewed and critiqued. In contrast, clinical observations and empirical studies that focus on painful affects and subjective states of distress more consistently suggest that such states of suffering are important psychological determinants in using, becoming dependent upon, and relapsing to addictive substances. Subjective states of distress and suffering involved in motives to self-medicate with substances of abuse are considered with respect to nicotine dependence and to schizophrenia and posttraumatic stress disorder comorbid with a substance use disorder.

The Self-medication Hypothesis of Substance Use Disorders: A Reconsideration and Recent Applications

Objective: The aim of the study is to validate the ability of ACASM (Automated Co-occurrence Analysis for Semantic Mapping) to provide a representation of the content of the therapeutic exchange that is useful for clinical analysis. Method: We compared the clinical case analyses of a good outcome psychodynamic therapy performed by a group of clinicians (n = 5) based on the verbatim transcripts (transcript-based analysis) with the clinical case analyses performed by another group of clinicians (n = 5) based on the ACASM representation of the same sessions (ACASM-based analysis). Comparison concerned two levels: the descriptive level and the interpretative level of the clinical case analysis. Results: Findings showed that, inconsistently with our hypothesis, ACASM-based descriptions of the case obtained worse evaluations than transcript-based descriptions of the case (on all 3 criteria adopted). On the contrary, consistently with our hypothesis, ACASM is undistinguishable from the verbatim transcrip...

An automated method of content analysis for psychotherapy research: A further validation.

It is recognised that cultural factors play a role in the onset and continuation of several mental health problems. However, there is a significant lack of empirical studies investigating the relationships between cultural factors and gambling behavior. This study assessed whether the subjective cultures through which subjects interpret and enact their experience of the social environment play a major role in increasing (or decreasing) the probability of pathological gambling. Participants, recruited in three different contexts (public health services for the treatment of addiction, casino, undergraduate course) were subjected to the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) (Lesieur and Blume in Am J Psychiatry 144(9):1184–1188, 1987), in order to identify a group of pathological gamblers—and with the Questionnaire on the Interpretation of the Social Environment (QUISE) (Mossi and Salvatore in Eur J Educ Psychol 4(2):153–169, 2011)—in order to detect their subjective cultures. The study compares pathological group (scoring >5 on SOGS, n = 34) and a healthy control group (scoring <1 on SOGS, n = 35). One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare groups on QUISE scores of subjective culture. Moreover, a logistic regression was applied in order to esteem the capability of the QUISE scores to differentiate between pathological gamblers and control. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that pathological group expresses different subjective cultures compared with no gambler subjects. The theoretical and clinical implications of the results are discussed.

The Role of Cultural Factors in Differentiating Pathological Gamblers

Emotional distress, psychosomatic symptoms and their relationship with institutional responses: A survey of Italian frontline medical staff during the Covid-19 pandemic

The aim of this paper was to present an action-research intervention for the prevention of Internet addiction (IA) in schools. Applying a pre-experimental research design model, a total of 90 young subjects (45 males and 45 females) were treated using a peer education programme. The Internet Addiction Test was used as a screening tool pre- and post-treatment and analysed using a paired t-test. The results showed a significant positive difference in the post-treatment values for both males and females. This research highlights the link between IA and cultural and social aspects of the disease in addition to discussing the difficulties of IA prevention.

Internet Addiction: a prevention action-research intervention

The current study examines whether cultural differences in the way of interpreting the social environment affect the probability of different kinds of addictive behaviours. Subjective cultures of the social environment were detected through the questionnaire on the Interpretation of the Social Environment (ISE) in a convenience sample of 771 participants from Italy. Problem gambling, drinking, internet use and smoking were assessed. A problem group was identified and a healthy group was selected for each of the four kinds of harmful behaviours. Logistic regressions were used to compare problem groups and control on ISE scores of subjective cultures. Problem groups of gamblers, drinkers and internet users were found to differ from control in their evaluation of the social environment, which they considered very unreliable. The problem group of smokers differs from control in their relationship with the social environment, viewed as an anomic place. The findings support the idea that subjective cult...

Towards a cultural understanding of addictive behaviours. The image of the social environment among problem gamblers, drinkers, internet users and smokers

Claudia Venuleo

Papers

An automated method of content analysis for psychotherapy research: A further validation.

The Role of Cultural Factors in Differentiating Pathological Gamblers

Emotional distress, psychosomatic symptoms and their relationship with institutional responses: A survey of Italian frontline medical staff during the Covid-19 pandemic

Internet Addiction: a prevention action-research intervention

Towards a cultural understanding of addictive behaviours. The image of the social environment among problem gamblers, drinkers, internet users and smokers