Though several treatments effectively address the pervasive impact of trauma, they do not achieve... more Though several treatments effectively address the pervasive impact of trauma, they do not achieve complete symptom resolution for all clients, inspiring the search for alternatives. Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy has grown popular, especially in informal psychedelic-assisted treatments (PAT). Compared to stereotypes of empirically validated, exposure-based treatments, IFS has novel facets with widespread appeal. The model encourages improved quality of interactions among multiple, naturally arising "parts" or subpersonalities potentially generated by traumatic experience. The body of IFS literature is extensive, enthusiastic, and thought-provoking. Outcome data for applying the model to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are limited. Attempts to operationalize and falsify the theory's assumptions and proposed mechanisms will likely prove challenging. Nevertheless, the model's popularity underscores a problem with perceptions of the empirically-supported treatments. Contemplating ethical ways to present the IFS approach given the state of relevant research, we note strategies that would apply to recommendations for PAT of any type. These strategies include detailed psychoeducation about empirically-supported treatments, candid description of the experimental nature of alternatives, frequent assessments of improvement, and detailed monitoring of potential iatrogenic effects. Drawing on facets of IFS to improve perceptions of the empirically validated treatments might provide an efficient way to appeal to more clients, decrease drop out, and increase gains as we await results of empirical investigations of IFS-influenced PAT. These steps can allow clients to choose an approach consistent with their own impressions of a credible intervention, potentially leading to better outcomes.
ABSTRACT Drug use can seem an odd and inexplicable act but might be part of a larger quest to mak... more ABSTRACT Drug use can seem an odd and inexplicable act but might be part of a larger quest to make meaning in life. This chapter places this quest within the context of recent psychological theorizing related to the Meaning Maintenance Model (Proulx and Heine, Psychol Inq, 17:309–318, 2006). This model suggests that threats to one’s sense of meaning motivate compensatory efforts to create an environment that appears meaningful—especially by changing the world, one’s perceptions of it, or one’s beliefs. We suggest that societal teachings about drugs are often at odds with individual experiences, essentially threatening meaning. This threat then encourages further inquiry about drugs, potentially increasing use or motivating questions about societal teachings. A review of recent empirical support for the Meaning Maintenance Model leads to novel predictions about the potential effects of misinformation about drug use motives and behavior. This information might inadvertently motivate drug experiences, altering expectancies and contributing to use.
Subtypes of Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Cannabis Use
Substance Use & Misuse, Oct 4, 2013
The current study examined the association between subtypes of attention-deficit/hyperactivity di... more The current study examined the association between subtypes of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and cannabis use within a sample of 2811 current users. Data were collected in 2012 from a national U.S. survey of cannabis users. A series of logistic regression equations and chi-squares were assessed for proportional differences between users. When asked about the ADHD symptoms they have experienced when not using cannabis, a higher proportion of daily users met symptom criteria for an ADHD diagnoses of the subtypes that include hyperactive-impulsive symptoms than the inattentive subtype. For nondaily users, the proportions of users meeting symptom criteria did not differ by subtype. These results have implications for identifying which individuals with ADHD might be more likely to self-medicate using cannabis. Furthermore, these findings indirectly support research linking relevant cannabinoid receptors to regulatory control.
Background and aims: Multiple laboratories have proposed measures of subjective effects of psyche... more Background and aims: Multiple laboratories have proposed measures of subjective effects of psychedelics as potential mediators of their therapeutic impact. Other work has identified individual differences that covary with subjective responses in informative ways. The range of potential measures of responses, traits, and outcomes is vast. Ideas for new measures are likely numerous. The field will progress efficiently if proposed new scales can add incremental validity. Semantic Scale Network analyses identify conceptual overlap among scales based on items (rather than participant ratings), which could help laboratories avoid putting effort into measures that are unlikely to account for unique variance. Semantic Scale Network analyses can also reveal links to constructs from disparate research literatures, potentially helping investigators generate novel hypotheses and explain connections among disparate findings. The results of Semantic Scale Network analyses have the potential to improve as more investigators enter their scales into the corpus. Method: Example analyses using the revised Mystical Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ) underscore the uniqueness and discriminant validity of the MEQ subscales. Results: Findings dovetail with published theorizing and suggest potentially novel links with different therapeutic effects. The MEQ total or subscales overlap with measures of awe, inspiration, regret, dissatisfaction, transcendence, depression, fatigue, and spirituality. Links with measures of stress, alexithymia, and gender identity suggest lines of further work. Conclusions: This analytic approach might suggest unique applications for psychedelic-assisted treatments and provide perspectives on phenomena outside the field. As psychedelic researchers enter their scales to the corpus for Semantic Scale Network analyses, the field will benefit.
Scoping Review of Experiential Measures from Psychedelic Research and Clinical Trials
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
Expectancies for Cannabis-Induced Emotional Breakthrough, Mystical Experiences and Changes in Dysfunctional Attitudes: Perceptions of the Potential for Cannabis-Assisted Psychotherapy for Depression
Cannabis
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has established antidepressant effects. Cannabis users appear ... more Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has established antidepressant effects. Cannabis users appear to expect high doses administered in a session much like psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to create comparable subjective effects. The current studies explored expectations of antidepressant effects of such cannabis-assisted sessions to replicate and extend previous work. Users not only expected a cannabis-assisted psychotherapy session to decrease depression, but also to alter some of the same mediators of psychedelic or psychological treatments. Over 500 participants in Study I envisioned a cannabis-assisted therapy session akin to those used in psychedelic therapies and reported the effects that they expected on depression as well as relevant subjective reactions. A second sample of over 500 participants responded to identical measures and an index of dysfunctional attitudes that appears to mediate antidepressant effects of psychotherapy. Expectancies of cannabis-induced antidepress...
Integration in Psychedelic-Assisted Treatments: Recurring Themes in Current Providers’ Definitions, Challenges, and Concerns
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Apr 2, 2022
How Important Is a Guide Who Has Taken Psilocybin in Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy for Depression?
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2022
Exploring the Credibility of Psilocybin-assisted Therapy and Cognitive-behavioral Therapy for Depression
Depression treatments succeed with many but leave others unimproved, and they can generate concer... more Depression treatments succeed with many but leave others unimproved, and they can generate concerns about side effects, time, and cost. Psilocybin has generated media attention and empirical support for antidepressant effects, but lay impressions of its effectiveness are unclear. Although perceptions of treatment credibility contribute to outcome, beliefs about the credibility of psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAT) among potential patients remain uninvestigated, especially relative to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), a common, empirically-validated approach. The present study examined credibility ratings for CBT and PAT among individuals reporting depressive symptoms. Participants (N = 803) from Amazon's MTurk platform reported demographics, depressive symptoms, and psychotherapy experience, then read data-based vignettes describing each therapy and rated their credibility. Individuals rated CBT as more credible than PAT. Those with therapy experience rated CBT as more credible than those without. Men and lifetime hallucinogen users rated PAT more credible than women and non-users, but few other predictors accounted for much variance in credibility. Results suggest that potential clients appear cautious about PAT. As continued work examines the effectiveness of psychedelic-assisted interventions, researchers and clinicians must consider patients' beliefs about treatments as potential predictors of outcomes. Additionally, the paradigm used here might have potential for examining credibility of many interventions.
Evaluating the effectiveness of a text-based online mood induction procedure adapted for use in an English-speaking web-based sample
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Ketamine, and Combination Treatment for Depression: Impressions of Credibility in Participants with Self-Reported Depressive Symptoms
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2021
ABSTRACT Ketamine, a novel treatment for depression, has generated considerable interest and rese... more ABSTRACT Ketamine, a novel treatment for depression, has generated considerable interest and research. Few experiments address lay impressions of the credibility of ketamine treatment relative to another popular intervention for depression, CBT. Over 500 participants with depressive symptoms read descriptions of CBT, ketamine, and a treatment that combined the two. Descriptions included pros and cons of each approach. Participants found the combination treatment more credible than ketamine but no better than CBT alone. They rated the credibility of CBT alone significantly higher than ketamine alone. Participants with psychotherapy experience tended to view ketamine as less credible than those who did not report previous psychotherapy. Depression scores did not covary with credibility ratings for any treatment. Despite media coverage and Internet claims, potential clients are cautious about ketamine. These results suggest that providing descriptions of treatments might help reveal important information about their credibility to potential clients. Extended work assessing impressions of many approaches to the treatment of psychopathology and other problems appears justifiable. Given established links between credibility and treatment outcome, additional research on individual differences in perceptions of ketamine and varied treatments for depression seems warranted.
Background and aims Multiple laboratories have proposed measures of subjective effects of psyched... more Background and aims Multiple laboratories have proposed measures of subjective effects of psychedelics as potential mediators of their therapeutic impact. Other work has identified individual differences that covary with subjective responses in informative ways. The range of potential measures of responses, traits, and outcomes is vast. Ideas for new measures are likely numerous. The field will progress efficiently if proposed new scales can add incremental validity. Semantic Scale Network analyses identify conceptual overlap among scales based on items (rather than participant ratings), which could help laboratories avoid putting effort into measures that are unlikely to account for unique variance. Semantic Scale Network analyses can also reveal links to constructs from disparate research literatures, potentially helping investigators generate novel hypotheses and explain connections among disparate findings. The results of Semantic Scale Network analyses have the potential to imp...
In this paper, we study amplitude shaping schemes for the probabilistic amplitude shaping (PAS) f... more In this paper, we study amplitude shaping schemes for the probabilistic amplitude shaping (PAS) framework as well as algorithms for constant-composition distribution matching (CCDM). Huffman-coded sphere shaping (HCSS) is discussed in detail, which internally uses Huffman coding to determine the composition to be used and relies on conventional CCDM algorithms for mapping and demapping. Numerical simulations show that HCSS closes the performance gap between distribution matching schemes and sphere shaping techniques such as enumerative sphere shaping (ESS). HCSS is based on an architecture that is different from the trellis-based setup of ESS. It allows to tailor the used HCSS compositions to the transmission channel and to take into account complexity constraints. We further discuss in detail multiset ranking (MR) and subset ranking (SR) as alternatives to arithmetic-coding (AC) CCDM. The advantage of MR over AC is that it requires less sequential operations for mapping. SR operates on binary alphabets only, which can introduce some additional rate loss when a nonbinary-to-binary transformation is required. However, the binomial coefficients required for SR can be precomputed and stored in a lookup table (LUT). We perform an analysis of rate loss and decoding performance for the proposed techniques and compare them to other prominent amplitude shaping schemes. For medium to long block lengths, MR-HCSS and SR-HCSS are shown to have similar performance to ESS. SR-HCSS and uniform 64QAM are compared in additive white Gaussian noise simulations and shaping gains of 0.5 dB and 1 dB are demonstrated with 1 kbit and 100 kbit LUT size, respectively.
Given the growing legalization of recreational marijuana use and related increase in its prevalen... more Given the growing legalization of recreational marijuana use and related increase in its prevalence in the United States, it is important to understand marijuana's appeal. We used a behavioral economic (BE) approach to examine whether the reinforcing properties of marijuana, including "demand" for marijuana, varied as a function of its perceived quality. Using an innovative, Web-based marijuana purchase task (MPT), a sample of 683 young-adult recreational marijuana users made hypothetical purchases of marijuana across three qualities (low, mid and high grade) at nine escalating prices per joint, ranging from $0/free to $20. We used nonlinear mixed effects modeling to conduct demand curve analyses, which produced separate demand indices (e.g., Pmax, elasticity) for each grade of marijuana. Consistent with previous research, as the price of marijuana increased, marijuana users reduced their purchasing. Demand also was sensitive to quality, with users willing to pay more ...
Exploring street market dynamics for prescription opioid misuse in Canada: data from Toronto and Victoria
Life, Drugs, and the Making of Meaning
The Experience of Meaning in Life, 2013
ABSTRACT Drug use can seem an odd and inexplicable act but might be part of a larger quest to mak... more ABSTRACT Drug use can seem an odd and inexplicable act but might be part of a larger quest to make meaning in life. This chapter places this quest within the context of recent psychological theorizing related to the Meaning Maintenance Model (Proulx and Heine, Psychol Inq, 17:309–318, 2006). This model suggests that threats to one’s sense of meaning motivate compensatory efforts to create an environment that appears meaningful—especially by changing the world, one’s perceptions of it, or one’s beliefs. We suggest that societal teachings about drugs are often at odds with individual experiences, essentially threatening meaning. This threat then encourages further inquiry about drugs, potentially increasing use or motivating questions about societal teachings. A review of recent empirical support for the Meaning Maintenance Model leads to novel predictions about the potential effects of misinformation about drug use motives and behavior. This information might inadvertently motivate drug experiences, altering expectancies and contributing to use.
Addictions collected: How many bad apples spoil the bunch?
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