News by Subject Social & Behavior

Young people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual are at increased risk of using substances such as alcohol, nicotine and marijuana, a new study from Oregon State University has found.

A new study in the Journal of Public Health indicates that adolescents who experience back pain more frequently are also more likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and report problems like anxiety and depression.

Repeated binge drinking activates genes in an area of the brain linked to addiction differently in males and females. Genes associated with hormone signaling and immune function are affected by repeated binge drinking in female mice, whereas genes associated with nerve signaling are affected in the males. These findings have implications for alcohol abuse treatment, emphasizing the importance of considering the sex of patients when developing effective pharmaceutical therapies.

A new study has identified at-risk populations for whom depression screening combined with hazardous alcohol use screening could detect depressive symptoms that might otherwise go untreated. These populations include non-White and more medically ill patients, and men in general, for whom screening rates are particularly low.

Results from a recent analysis reveal that the availability of alcohol associated with turning 21 years old may have relatively large effects on risky behaviors, especially in men. The findings are published in Contemporary Economic Policy.

A housing subsidy treatment that enables low-income families in US cities to move from public to private housing appears to reduce adolescent girls' binge drinking but increase adolescent boys' binge drinking. The reasons for these differential gender effects are not yet clear.

The aim of the research is to create a representative picture of the prevalence and the total number of drug users in Albania from 2012 to 2016, and compare those numbers to previous years with other available data.

In a study with NCAA athletes, researchers found that the more closely a player identified as being part of their team, the more likely they were to conform to their teammates' behavior. This was true for both risky and positive behaviors.