Thesis (doctoral)--Åbo akademi, 1980. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. [139]-146).

Thesis (doctoral)--Åbo akademi, 1980. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. [139]-146).

Lifestyles, including alcohol consumption and illicit drug use in medical students were assessed using a self-completion questionnaire. Eight cohorts of secondy ear medical students were assessed consecutively between 1993-2000. The proportion of medical students in each cohort drinking excessively increased during this period. Illicit drug use stayed fairly stable with approximately half of each year group reporting having experimented with illicit drugs. Lifestyles in medical students were assessed in the second and final year of studies and one year after graduation. Alcohol consumption and illicit drug use had significantly increased over the 4 year period of the study. Two cohorts of medical and dental students were also compared in a similar study design. Although alcohol consumption in dental students was more than their medical student counterparts during the second year of the studies, it decreased one year after graduation. Illicit drug use was higher in medics than in dentists at all three time points. Nearly half of the fresher medical students reported to have been drinking excessively and using illicit drugs before beginning university life. Personality characteristics of the students were found to be related to their alcohol and illicit drug use. A significant proportion of pre-registration house officers suffered from stress and anxiety with more women than men having anxiety scores within the clinically significant range. Job satisfaction was low, with more pre-registration house officers being dissatisfied with the organisational processes of their jobs. Personality was significantly related to stress, anxiety, depression and job satisfaction. Education on alcohol and illicit drugs for young people may be needed at a much earlier age. Dealing with the problems of drink, drugs and stress among medical students and doctors may require a holistic approach which considers both the culture of medical education and work conditions.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Stress has been shown to contribute to alcohol drinking; however, inconsistencies in both the clinical and pre-clinical literature speak to the need for better paradigms to study this interaction. The present experiments compared animal models of the propensity to consume ethanol, the selectively bred alcohol-preferring (P) and high-alcohol-drinking (HAD) rat lines, in their response to yohimbine on ethanol seeking and self-administration and anxiety-like behavior. The P and HAD lines consume similar amounts of ethanol, yet differ in apparent motivation to drink ethanol, in anxiety-like behavior, and response to stress in alcohol drinking. Therefore, it was of interest to determine whether stress may differentially affect ethanol-motivated behaviors between the P and HAD lines. Acute administration of yohimbine, an α-2 adrenoreceptor antagonist that increases anxiety and activate stress systems, increased operant ethanol self-administration and reinstatement of ethanol seeking in P rats, and free-choice ethanol drinking in both P and HAD rats. However, acute yohimbine administration decreased ethanol drinking when given limited access in the home cage, an effect that was diminished by extending the pre-treatment interval or increasing the number of ethanol exposure sessions. Yohimbine did not alter appetitive responding during a non-reinforced trial, nor did yohimbine alter the acquisition of free-choice ethanol drinking. Exposure to alcohol deprivation resulted in modest increases in ethanol intake, but yohimbine did not potentiate this effect. While acute yohimbine administration increased anxiety-like behavior, prior experience with repeated yohimbine exposures or with repeated deprivation periods did not. P rats were shown to be more active and less anxious and to display greater responding during a non-reinforced trial than HAD rats. Taken together, the results of these experiments demonstrate that the timing of yohimbine exposure relative to ethanol access is a critical component to determining its effects on ethanol seeking and self-administration and anxiety-like behavior. Further investigation into the parameters under which stress alters the motivation to seek and consume ethanol between these selectively bred lines is warranted, and future work that incorporates therapeutic agents aimed at reducing stress reactivity and alcohol drinking could elucidate effective strategies in the treatment of alcoholism.