The present study used the Health Belief Model (HBM) to better understand how perceived susceptibility and severity (perceived threat) can contribute to college student’s willingness to use non-prescription stimulants (NPS). Prior research has shown that as the perceived threat of use increased college student’s intentions to use NPS has decreased (Sattler, Mehlkop, & Graeff, 2013). The psychology research pool was used to recruit 1067 non-user undergraduate students to complete the vignettes and the survey. Participants were given one of sixteen different vignettes that manipulated the perceived threat for academic and health consequences associated with NPS use. Data analyses showed that a combination of high perceived academic threat (high susceptibility and severity) along with high health susceptibility yielded the lowest willingness to use NPS. Therefore, the higher susceptibility that an academic and health consequence will occur along with the higher severity of an academic consequence will occur predicted the lowest intentions to use NPS. Future research should continue to examine what factors can best deter non-users and users from using NPS.

Cocaine use disorder is a serious public health issue for which no approved pharmacotherapies exist. The development of a pharmacotherapy for cocaine use disorder is a priority for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Amphetamine maintenance has been shown to be effective to reduce cocaine use in double-blind placebo controlled clinical trials, but has not been approved due to concerns over safety and abuse liability. Development of new pharmacotherapies is facilitated by preclinical testing for effectiveness and identification of new targets for medication development. The first part of this dissertation develops a novel non-human primate cocaine self-administration choice procedure that is modeled after a human laboratory cocaine self-administration choice procedure to improve translational research and facilitate medication development. The second part of this dissertation is devoted to examining the mechanisms of amphetamine maintenance-induced decreases in cocaine use. In the novel non-human primate choice procedure, monkeys chose between injections of cocaine or food pellets (0, 1, 3 or 10) in a 9-choice discrete trials procedure. The reinforcers were available on concurrent independent progressive-ratio schedules. Monkeys chose between cocaine and food in a dose- and magnitude-dependent manner. Maintenance on 7 days of lisdexamfetamine and amphetamine decreased cocaine choices without decreasing food responding, providing evidence that this model may be able to predict drugs that will have clinical efficacy to decrease cocaine use. The next set of experiments examined the effects of amphetamine maintenance on the abuse-related behavioral (intracranial self-stimulation, ICSS) and neurochemical [nucleus accumbens dopamine (DA) and serotonin (5-HT)] effects of cocaine, methylenedioxypyrovalerone, and methamphetamine in rats. Amphetamine maintenance produced sustained increases in ICSS baseline responding and nucleus accumbens DA levels without affecting 5-HT levels. Amphetamine maintenance also attenuated the behavioral and neurochemical abuse-related effects of cocaine but not those of methamphetamine, and with MDPV, amphetamine maintenance decreased the abuse-related neurochemical effect of MDPV, but not the abuse-related behavioral effect. This suggests that amphetamine would likely be most effective against cocaine, least effective against methamphetamine and between the two for MDPV. These data suggest targets that selectively release DA will be the most effective against cocaine use disorder.

abstract: There is a growing trend among community samples of young, adult women to initiate drug use for weight loss (Boys, Marsden, & Strang, 2001; Mendieta-Tan, Hulbert-Williams, & Nicholls, 2013). Research has suggested that consequential weight loss may maintain drug use (Cohen, et al., 2010; Ersche, Stochl, Woodward, & Fletcher, 2013; Sirles, 2002), which is compounded by women's perception that drugs are convenient and guarantee weight loss (Mendieta-Tan, et al., 2013). Stimulants, including cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, and ecstasy, are notable drugs of use among college students (Johnston, et al., 2014; Teter, McCabe, LaGrange, Cranford, & Boyd, 2006). With known appetitive and metabolic effects, stimulants may be particularly attractive to college women, who are at elevated risk for increased body dissatisfaction and experimenting with extreme weight loss techniques (Grunewald, 1985; National Eating Disorder Association, 2013). A preliminary epidemiological study of 130 college women between 16- and 24-years old (Mage = 18.76, SDage = 1.09) was conducted to begin to investigate this phenomenon. Results showed women who reported use for weight control (n = 19, 14.6 %) predominantly used stimulants (68.4%), and this subgroup was severely elevated on global and subscales of eating pathology compared with college norms. Moreover, the odds of stimulant use were doubled when women engaged in a compensatory behavior, such as excessive exercise, self-induced vomiting, and laxative use. Although preliminary, these results suggest that a desire for weight control may be associated with stimulant use among college women. Women engaging in more extreme weight loss behaviors are at high risk for initiating and maintaining illicit stimulant use for weight-related reasons. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2016

Current evidence suggests that non-medical prescription stimulant (NMPS) use is on the rise, particularly among college students. Identifying individuals at risk for regular and problematic use is a critical step towards the development of effective intervention efforts. A growing body of work has noted that individuals with elevated levels of social anxiety (SA) or social anxiety disorder are at an enhanced risk for developing substance use problems, including NMPS use disorder. Despite the relevance of SA and NMPS use among college students, no studies have attempted to examine subclinical SA or the relation between SA and NMPS use among college students specifically. Thus, the present study sought to extend this area by testing the relation of SA symptoms and NMPS use frequency among college students. A large online study of college students was conducted (N=1604) to identify 252 NMPS users (18-25 years; 68.3% female). A hierarchical linear regression was used to test the moderation of positive prescription stimulant expectancies on SA symptoms in predicting past year NMPS use frequency. A subsample of 15 participants was also brought into the lab to assess subjective (State Anxiety) and physiological (salivary cortisol) responding to a social stressor task. Overall, the current study did not provide evidence that SA, via retrospective self-report or real-time responding was related to past year NMPS use frequency. Additional research is needed to resolve the discrepancies between the present findings and prior work.

Excerpt:The prognosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHA) continues to "show heightened risk of multiple mental health and social difficulties as well as premature mortality in adult life" after nearly 50 years of primary pharmacological treatment. If the prognosis of ADHA is not changed by stimulants, then 2016 research that stimulants may cause cardiac arrhythmia and myocardial infarcation associated with subquent death in children younger than 17 years prescribed methylphenidate (MPH)^2 raises the question of whether stimulants should be used. Furthermore, a 2015 Cochran Review found 98.6% of ADHD randomized clinical trials could also have been considered high risk by using a stricter definition. ^3 Has medicalization and marketing of the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD become the basis of putting children at risk by using stimulants, especially in the United States?

The goal of this study was to determine the extent, motivations, and justifications of nonmedical prescription stimulant use among the population at a large public university in the North Texas region. Participants consisted of 526 undergraduate students enrolled at the studied university during the spring and summer 2014 semesters. The findings of the study suggest that the nonmedical use by students was higher than the findings in much of the current literature, but was within the parameters established in the literature. The primary motivation for nonmedical use was academic in nature and was justified by moderation of nonmedical use to strategic academic times.