Neuropsychological functioning and emotional distress in drug-addicted youth. A pilot study.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Epidemiological studies suggest that the incidence of substance disorders peaks in young adulthood, generally involving poly-drug use and new psychoactive substances. Consistent evidence attest emotional problems in drug addicts, especially in terms of alexithymia and sensation-seeking, and substance abuse has been conceived as resulting from inadequate coping strategies, mainly relying on avoidance. Substance abuse itself is seen as a dysfunctional mean of coping with negative emotions such as fear and anxiety. Furthermore, several studies prove that drug abuse leads to severe neurotoxic effects, with memory, attention and executive impairments even in young age. The study aims to identify the most critical features, and their interrelations, for the above- mentioned factors in young drug-addicts. The research involved 21 participants (age ranged from 17 to 25 years) undergoing residential treatment; most of them were poly-drug users, mixing heroin and synthetic drugs, and were low-educated. The instruments administered addressed: psychological symptoms (Symptom Checklist -90 Revised, SCL-90-R), coping strategies (Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced- Nuova Versione Italiana, COPE-NVI), alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 items, TAS-20; Observer Alexithymia Scale OAS), sensation seeking (Sensation Seeking Scale, SSS-VI) and cognitive functions (Esame Neuropsicologico Breve, ENB-2). The research provided for both self-report and observational tools (administered to social workers that knew well the patient) in order to compare the two evaluations and to infer in which extent participants were well-aware of their difficulties. Participants revealed a significant psychological distress (specifically in terms of anxiety and depression), the prevalence of maladaptive coping strategies (relying mainly on avoidant coping and overestimating the extent in which they turn to others to obtain social support) and notable emotional difficulties, with high rate of alexithymia and sensation seeking. As regard the neuropsychological functioning, attention and memory resulted to be the most impaired functions. Results also highlight that the cognitive functioning significantly correlates with psychological distress, maladaptive coping and emotional problems. Young drug-addicts present a complex and severe clinical condition, in which the role of neuropsychological deficits seems to be crucial. Appropriate treatments focusing on neuropsychological rehabilitations are needed besides the traditional psycho-dynamically oriented interventions provided in Italy to drug-addicts.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".