Involvement in alcohol-related verbal or physical aggression. Does social status matter?

In their analyses of a large sample of Swedes (N=104316), Ludwig Kraus and colleagues assessed the association between social status variables and aggression when controlling for volume of alcohol consumption and episodic heavy drinking (EHD), tested whether social status moderates the association between volume or EHD and verbal as well as physical aggression, and investigated whether EHD moderates the effect of volume on aggression. They found that groups of lower educated and nonmarried individuals experience verbal or physical aggression over and above different levels of consumption.

Gambling, violent behaviour and attitudes towards violence among adolescent gamblers in Finland

Tiina Räsänen and colleagues explored the relationship between gambling and violent behaviour and attitudes towards violence among 14- and 16-year-old Finnish adolescents. They found that both gambling frequency and the number of gambling-related harms were linked to violent behaviour as well as to positive attitudes towards violence. Adolescents who engaged in gambling on a daily basis and/or experienced gambling harms had the highest risk.

Monitoring local alcohol prevention in Sweden

Swedish municipalities carry out a variety of alcohol prevention activities, but there is little knowledge of how these have developed over time, due partly to the lack of tools for monitoring prevention activities locally. In this study Tony Nilsson, Håkan Leifman and Sven Andréasson develop an Alcohol Prevention Magnitude Measure (APMM) based on local data, and analyse the development of local alcohol prevention by using APMM. The results reveal that local alcohol prevention in Sweden, as measured by the APMM, has increased generally between 2006 and 2010 as a result of more local policies and activities.

Ten years of maintenance treatement in Norway

The national Opiate Maintenance Treatment (OMT) program in Norway started officially in 1998. Edle Ravndal and Grethe Lauritzen investigate the prevalence of live OMT patients in the total sample after 10 years, and compare the outcome of primarily substance abuse, anxiety and depression among OMT patients versus non-OMT patients. The OMT-group reported to a larger extent more anxiety and depression throughout the total observation period than the non OMT participants. Use of heroin and criminality were significantly reduced in both groups, but the OMT patients had more difficulties in reducing the use of benzodiazepines and cannabis.

Dynamic control important for substance abuse treatment in Norwegian prisons

The treatment of prison inmates in the Nordic countries has been described as humane and welfare-oriented. Janne Henriette Ingarsdotter Helgesen explores how key actors working in 13 substance treatment units in Norwegian prisons assess the responsibilities, working methods and goal attainment of these units, and how their descriptions fit the idea of a Nordic exceptionalism. The main pattern that emerges from this study supports that welfare orientation and ideas about therapy and rehabilitation are priorities in work with imprisoned substance users in substance

The creation of addictology behind the iron curtain

In their perspective article, Mihal Miovsky and colleagues seek to identify, describe and explain important events in shaping the historical context where the Czech education in addiction science and conception of addictology were developed. Because of the Iron Curtain, Czech practitioners had to develop their own concept of addiction and ideas on training psychotherapists so they could not be labelled western or anti-state, or be subject to intense state control.