College-aged individuals experience verbal and physical dating aggression at high rates, which is troubling given the associated deleterious consequences. Verbal and physical aggression are highly correlated, with verbal aggression often serving as a precursor to physical aggression. The current studies examined factors that may influence the likelihood and escalation of dating aggression in response to a dating conflict scenario, including alcohol intoxication, self-regulation, and trait aggressivity. Study 1 assessed the construct validity of a newly developed audio-taped scenario of mutual aggression as well as a hot sauce task. Men and women with (n=31) and without (n=30) a history of past-year dating aggression provided responses to the conflict scenario using the Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations (ATSS) procedure. Under the guise of an assessment of sensitivity, participants allocated hot sauce for a fictitious participant to consume. Results supported the construct validity of the conflict scenario but not the hot sauce task, which was therefore not included in Study 2. Study 2 examined the influence of alcohol's pharmacological and expectancy effects as well as one’s ability to self-regulate thoughts, feelings, and behavior on aggression intentions in response to the mutual aggression conflict scenario. Participants were randomized to either receive alcohol (n=48; blood alcohol content M = .082%), placebo (n=48), or no alcohol (n=48). Using ATSS procedures identical to Study 1, intoxicated individuals articulated more verbal aggression intentions overall and exhibited a greater increase across the conflict scenario than those who did not receive alcohol, but did not differ from those who received placebo. There were no effects of alcohol on physical aggression intentions. Individuals who received placebo and who were poorer at suppressing emotions articulated more verbal aggression intentions than intoxicated individuals. Additionally, individuals higher in trait aggressivity articulated more physical aggression intentions and intoxicated individuals with lower relationship satisfaction articulated more verbal aggression intentions. Results suggest that both the pharmacological and expectancy effects of alcohol were important to the occurrence of aggression. Whereas higher trait aggressivity and lower relationship satisfaction may be risk  factors  for  aggression,  regulating  one’s  emotions  may  reduce  the frequency of aggression. / text

Interpersonal violence is a matter of growing concern. Where the safety of the common man is concerned, the dangerousness of mental patients, the ongoing de-institutionalization within psychiatry, and the role of alcohol is disputed. In order to analyze the significance of abuse and mental disorder in violent behaviour, this subject was approached from two different perspectives; from a specific violent offence - homicide - examining the mental status of the offenders, and from individuals with a specific mental disorder - schizophrenia -and assessing the rate of criminal offence amongst them. Homicides in northern Sweden and in Stockholm, legally characterized as murder, manslaughter or assault and causing another’s death, and homicides followed by the offenders’ suicide, were studied. Medicolegal autopsy records, police reports, pretrial psychiatric reports and court records were collected and scrutinized. The criminal records of 644 persons, discharged from hospitals in Stockholm with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, were studied. The relative risk of criminal offence was analyzed by indirect standardization using the general population as a standard. Violent offenders were further examined from psychiatric records. In the homicide material, 16 females and 160 males killed 94 men, 78 women, and 15 children. Forty percent of all surviving offenders were abusers without a major mental disorder, 39% were mentally disordered, 11% committed suicide, and 10% were considered "normal". The abusers and their victims were older, often socially and mentally deteriorated, and well known to each other. The victim was the prime aggressor in half of the cases. Killings by mentally disordered persons and by those who committed suicide were characterized by intimacy between offender and victim; one third were also abusers. Multiple homicides and child murder were mainly seen among homicide-suicice cases. The "normal" offenders were more often of foreign origin and two thirds of the victims initiated the violence by physical attacks. Relatively more of the homicides in northern Sweden concerned intimate parties, use of firearms, and cases of homicide-suicide, as compared to homicides in Stockholm where drug abuse was more prevalent. Sixteen offenders (9%) in the homicide sample had schizophrenia (all males), while 38 subjects (6%) in the cohort of schizophrenics had committed a violent offence. No homicide was recorded and most of the offences were of minor severity. The rate of violent offence was four times higher in the study group as compared to the general population. Most homicides involved closely related persons with separation and dependence as the dominating psychological theme, especially in homicide- suicide cases. Intoxication was regularly seen among the abusers but not among the non-abusers. The acute effect of alcohol intoxication may be of lesser importance in violence as compared to the long-term effects of abuse. Schizophrenics do not impress as a particularly dangerous group. Prevention by psychiatry is difficult; most offenders did not have any contact with psychiatry prior to the act. / <p>S. 1-70: sammanfattning, s. 71-176: 5 uppsatser</p> / digitalisering@umu

There are many studies conducted on cognitive performance and of different aspects that can affect the performance. However, the literature review reveal that there is a knowledge gap in the area of measurements for bicycle stability and in how bicycle stability is affected during acute alcohol intoxication. The aim of this study is, therefore, to investigate if different group characteristics such as cycling experience, physical activity, sensation-seeking, or previous alcohol habits have an effect on bicycle performance or executive functions during acute alcohol intoxication. The method of the study was to measure stability while bicycling on a tread-mill and give participants doses of alcohol until a Breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) level of approximately 0.8‰ was reached. The results showed that cognitive performance was almost unaffected for the different groups studied. The results of bicycle stability were almost equal in effect of time among the four different group characteristics in both Roll and YAW measurements. Three of the group characteristics showed a main effect or a tendency for interaction effect of group by time. The conclusion is that the measure of Roll, the vertical orientation on a bicycle, maybe is the most effective stability measurement for bicycles.

Bakgrund: Målet med hälso- och sjukvården är en vård på lika villkor för alla. Ambulanssjuksköterskor möter ibland patienter påverkade av alkohol eller droger vilket kan försvåra bedömning och behandling av patienten.  Motiv: Det finns idag sparsamt med forskning inom området att vårda patienter påverkade av alkohol eller droger, denna studie har fokus på vårdandet av påverkade i en prehospital kontext.  Syfte: Syftet med studien var att beskriva ambulanssjuksköterskors erfarenheter av att i en prehospital kontext vårda patienter påverkade av alkohol och/eller droger.  Metod: Studien genomfördes med hjälp av individuella semi-strukturerade intervjuer med specialistsjuksköterskor (n=9) anställda på ambulansstationer i norra Sverige. Intervjuerna analyserades med en kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Det resulterade i tre kategorier innehållande underkategorier. Resultat: Resultatet visar att ambulanssjuksköterskors erfarenheter av att vårda patienter påverkade av alkohol eller droger handlade om: Att bemästra det svåra vårdandet som innebar att ambulanssjuksköterskor upplevde att alkohol och droger komplicerade vårdandet och att det krävdes en handlingsberedskap för att bemästra. Att värna om en trygg och säker arbetsmiljö innebar att möta och hantera aggressiva situationer med fokus på den egna säkerheten. Att sträva efter god och lika vård var viktigt för ambulanssjuksköterskorna genom att följsamt bemöta patienter påverkade av alkohol eller droger. Konklusion: Studien tydliggör att ambulanssjuksköterskor behöver ha ett öppet förhållningssätt och bemöta och bedöma alla lika. Den prehospitala vården handlar många gånger om problemlösning, i synnerhet i vården av påverkade då de kan behöva hantera aggressiva situationer genom ett följsamt bemötande, skapa ett gott omhändertagande. / Background: The purpose of Swedish healthcare is equal care for everyone in the society. Ambulance nurses sometimes meet patients affected by alcohol or drugs, which may complicate the assessment and treatment of the patient Motive: There is currently a small amount of research in the field of caring for patients affected by alcohol or drugs, thus, this study has focus on the care of those patients in a prehospital context. Aim: The aim of the study was to describe the ambulance nurses’ experiences of caring for patients affected by alcohol and/or drugs in a prehospital context. Methods: The study was conducted using individual semi-structured interviews with specialist nurses (n=9) employed in ambulance stations in northern Sweden. The interviews were analyzed with a qualitative content analysis. This resulted in three categories containing subcategories.  Result: The results show that ambulance nurses’ experiences of caring for patients affected by alcohol or drugs were about: To master the difficult care which meant that ambulance nurses experienced that alcohol and drugs complicated the care and that readiness for action was required to master. To protect a safe and secure work environment meant meeting and managing aggressive situations with a focus on one’s own safety. To strive for good and equal care was important for the ambulance nurses by responsibly responding to patients under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Conclusion: The study clarifies that ambulance nurses need to have an open approach and treat and assess everyone equally. Prehospital care is often about problem solving, especially in the care of patients influenced by alcohol or drugs they may need to deal with aggressive situations through a compliant approach, creating good care.

High-dose alcohol intoxication is commonly associated with impaired inhibition, but the boundary conditions, as well as associated neurocognitive/neuroanatomical changes have remained rather unclear. This study was motivated by the counterintuitive finding that high-dose alcohol intoxication compromises response inhibition performance when working memory demands were low, but not when they were high. To investigate whether this is more likely to be caused by deficits in cognitive control processes or in attentional processes, we examined event-related (de)synchronization processes in theta and alpha-band activity and performed beamforming analyses on the EEG data of previously published behavioral findings. This yielded two possible explanations: There may be a selective decrease of working memory engagement in case of relatively low demand, which boosts response automatization, ultimately putting more strain on the remaining inhibitory resources. Alternatively, there may be a decrease in proactive preparatory and anticipatory attentional gating processes in case of relatively low demand, hindering attentional sampling of upcoming stimuli. Crucially, both of these interrelated mechanisms reflect differential alcohol effects after the actual motor inhibition process and therefore tend to be processes that serve to anticipate future response inhibition affordances. This provides new insights into how high-dose alcohol intoxication can impair inhibitory control.

Background/Aims: Adolescent alcohol binge-induced hospital admissions (BIHAs) are an increasing problem in Europe. We investigated whether psychosocial factors (e.g., drinking situations, drinking occasions and neighborhood unemployment) are associated with particularly risky patterns of alcohol or substance use. Method: We performed a systematic retrospective chart review of all the respective cases in 2003–2008 (n = 586; age range: 12–17 years) from both pediatric hospitals in the city of Dresden, Germany. Results: The vast majority of adolescent BIHAs were associated with drinking together with peers at weekend parties. Compared to this ‘typical’ drinking pattern, adolescents drinking ‘atypically’ (i.e., drinking either alone, to cope or despite the fact that the next day was a school/work day) more often had already used alcohol and illegal substances before and were more often diagnosed with substance use disorders and other mental disorders prior to BIHA. The unemployment rate in the patients’ neighborhood was positively related to the incidence proportion of adolescent BIHAs in the respective subdistricts (r s = 0.61). Conclusion: Adolescent atypical drinking may indicate an increased risk for the development of alcohol and substance use disorders. This information is quickly accessible and can alert clinicians to initiate psychosocial aftercare; their infrastructure should address the strong relation between BIHA probability and neighborhood unemployment rates.