MODELING THE IMPACT OF REHABILITATION, AMELIORATION AND RELAPSE ON THE PREVALENCE OF DRUG EPIDEMICS

Substance abuse remains a global menace in spite of recurrent warnings, seizures, social and pharmacological effects associated with addiction to drugs. In this paper, we use a mathematical model which is a combination of the classical SIS and SIR models to investigate the dynamics of substance abuse. Initiation into drug use is based on contact of those at risk (the susceptible population) with drug users at different levels of drug use. We evaluate the threshold number and use it to analyze the model. We show that when this threshold number is less than unity, the drug-free steady state is globally asymptotically stable and when this threshold number is greater than unity the drug-persistent steady state is also globally stable. The impact of amelioration, rehabilitation and re-initiation on drug epidemics is investigated. Amelioration in presence of quitting for light users is observed to reduce the prevalence of substance abuse and this is supported by numerical simulations. The results show that both prevention and treatment/rehabilitation are necessary strategies for reduction of drug epidemics. Our recommendation is that preventive strategies should be directed toward reducing the contact rate and treatment should be combined with psychotherapy to accelerate quitting and reduce re-initiation.

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Drug Screening

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.85.2.233 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 85 (2) ◽

pp. 233-233

Author(s):

ROBERT L. DUPONT

Keyword(s):

Substance Abuse ◽

Drug Use ◽

Drug Screening ◽

Children And Youth ◽

Wide Margin ◽

Drug Free ◽

Joint Report

To the Editor.— The joint report of the committee on Adolescence, the Committee on Bioethics, and the Provisional Committee on Substance Abuse (Pediatrics 1989;84:396-398) appears to miss the mark by a wide margin. Drugs and kids are a bad combination. Those of us concerned about children and youth need to work to help them grow up drug free. Screening for drug use is no more a violation of privacy than is screening for diabetes or tuberculosis.

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Trends of HIV Infection Among Injection Drug Users in Brazil in the 1990s: The Impact of Changes in Patterns of Drug Use

JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes ◽

10.1097/00126334-200111010-00016 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 28 (3) ◽

pp. 298-302

Author(s):

Fabio Mesquita ◽

Alex Kral ◽

Arthur Reingold ◽

Regina Bueno ◽

Daniela Trigueiros ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Drug Use ◽

Hiv Infection ◽

Injection Drug Users ◽

Drug Users ◽

Injection Drug ◽

The Impact

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Framing the issues

10.1093/oso/9780198818014.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Thomas F. Babor ◽

Jonathan Caulkins ◽

Benedikt Fischer ◽

David Foxcroft ◽

Keith Humphreys ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Drug Use ◽

Drug Users ◽

Scientific Evidence ◽

Harm Minimization ◽

Government Officials ◽

Policy Responses ◽

Demand Reduction ◽

Control Programmes ◽

The Impact

The use of psychoactive substances is commonplace in many parts of the world, despite the efforts of policymakers, government officials, public health advocates, and concerned citizens to prevent, eliminate, or control it. If previous experience can serve as a guide, in the future many countries will face periodic drug-use epidemics, followed by aggressive policy responses to suppress them. Continued endemic drug use generates a patchwork of policy responses that never quite keep up with the problem. The scientific evidence on the impact of policy constitutes the core interest of this book and consists of three broad approaches: programmes to prevent drug use, treatment and harm-minimization services that help heavy drug users change their behaviour, and supply control programmes to restrict access to illicit substances. This book suggests that public health concepts provide an important vehicle to coordinate supply control and demand reduction.

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Hurt

10.1525/california/9780520293465.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Miriam Boeri

Keyword(s):

Drug Use ◽

Data Collection ◽

Drug Users ◽

Data Science ◽

Qualitative Data ◽

Historical Context ◽

War On Drugs ◽

Treatment Programs ◽

Coerced Treatment ◽

The Impact

Hurt: Chronicles of the Drug War Generation weaves engaging first-person accounts of baby boomer drug users, including the account of the author’s own brother, a heroin addict. The compelling stories are set in their historical context, from the cultural influence of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n' roll to the contemporary discourse that pegs drug addiction as a disease punished by incarceration. Boeri writes with penetrating insight and conscientious attention to the intersectionality of race, gender, and class as she analyzes the impact of an increasingly punitive War on Drugs on a hurting generation. The chapters narrate the life course of men and women who continued to use cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine after age thirty-five. They were supposed to stop drug use as they assumed adult roles in life—as the generation before them had—but the War on Drugs led to mass imprisonment of drug users, changing the social landscape of aging. As one former inmate hauntingly said, America’s drug policy left scars that may rival those of the slavery and genocide in America’s past. The findings call for new responses to drug use problems and strategies that go beyond coerced treatment programs and rehabilitation initiatives focused primarily on changing the person. Linking tales from the field with sociological perspectives, Boeri presents an exposé as disturbing as a dystopian dream, warning that future generations will have an even harder time maturing out of drug use if the War on Drugs is not stopped and social recovery efforts begun. The book ends with an appendix that details how the research was conducted, the data collected and analyzed, and the results were drawn. It describes the ethnographic methods, fieldwork, participant-recruitment strategies, and the innovative mixed method approach—a combination of data science techniques with qualitative data collection. It includes a description of the data visualization images used to illustrate each participant’s life and drug trajectory in graphic simplicity. This appendix offers insight into how to conduct careful quality control at each phase of data collection, team coding of the qualitative data, and why Boeri selected the stories to include in this book.

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Global dynamics in a heroin epidemic model with different conscious stages and two distributed delays

International Journal of Biomathematics ◽

10.1142/s1793524519500384 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (03) ◽

pp. 1950038 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Xamxinur Abdurahman ◽

Zhidong Teng ◽

Ling Zhang

Keyword(s):

Epidemic Model ◽

Drug Users ◽

Distributed Delays ◽

Threshold Dynamics ◽

Uniform Persistence ◽

Global Dynamics ◽

Asymptotically Stable ◽

Globally Asymptotically Stable ◽

Number Formula ◽

Drug Free

A heroin epidemic model with different conscious stages and distributed delays is constructed. The model allows for conscious drug users and unconscious drug users. The threshold dynamics of the model is established. It is shown that drug-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable when basic reproduction number [Formula: see text]; when [Formula: see text], the uniform persistence of the model is proved, and it is proved that the endemic equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable.

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Drug Misuse in Scotland: Policy, Prevalence, and Public Health

Journal of Drug Issues ◽

10.1177/002204269802800106 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 28 (1) ◽

pp. 91-105 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Neil McKeganey

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Drug Use ◽

Drug Users ◽

Well Being ◽

Drug Prevention ◽

Drug Misuse ◽

Health Concern ◽

Illegal Drug Use ◽

Low Prevalence ◽

The Impact

The paper outlines the nature and extent of illegal drug use in Scotland. The paper provides a detailed discussion of the impact of HIV among injecting drug users in Scotland. It is shown that although HIV remains a major public health concern within parts of Scotland, most notably in Edinburgh and Dundee, HIV infection remains low elsewhere within Scotland. Although concern in relation to HIV has receded in light of the continuing low prevalence, there has been growing concern over the marked increase in drug-related deaths among drug users within parts of Scotland. Within the policy sphere greater attention is now being given to topic of drug prevention and the impact of drug use on community well being.

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The Impact of Depression and Acculturation on Injection Drug Use among Male Latino Injection Drug Users

Journal of HIV and AIDS ◽

10.16966/2380-5536.148 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Shehadeh N ◽

Attonito J ◽

Rubens M ◽

Sanchez J

Keyword(s):

Drug Use ◽

Injection Drug Use ◽

Injection Drug Users ◽

Drug Users ◽

Injection Drug ◽

The Impact

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Effects of COVID-19 on Substance Use in Singapore

Substance Abuse Research and Treatment ◽

10.1177/11782218211030533 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

pp. 117822182110305

Author(s):

Ho Teck Tan ◽

Boon Ceng Chai ◽

Yit Shiang Lui

Keyword(s):

Substance Abuse ◽

Substance Use ◽

Local Government ◽

Case Studies ◽

Healthcare System ◽

Current Literature ◽

Drug Users ◽

Street Drugs ◽

Provision Of Care ◽

The Impact

This review examines the impact of COVID-19 on the substance-abuse landscape and climate with particular attention on Singapore’s. Substance-abuse has received the least attention during the COVID-19 outbreak and this pandemic has further sheared the problem’s visibility and the provision of care for this population of sufferers. The authors examine the current literature to look at the access and utility of street drugs due to border closure, the influence of the pandemic on prevailing drug behaviours as well as the effect of social distancing on drug-users. Two case studies are described. The paper serves to illuminate the ever-present problem of substance-abuse even during a viral pandemic and to remind the local government and healthcare system to continue efforts in caring for this group of patients.

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THE IMPACT OF MEDIA COVERAGE ON THE DYNAMICS OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE

International Journal of Biomathematics ◽

10.1142/s1793524508000023 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 01 (01) ◽

pp. 65-74 ◽

Cited By ~ 95

Author(s):

YIPING LIU ◽

JING-AN CUI

Keyword(s):

Infectious Disease ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Compartment Model ◽

Endemic Equilibrium ◽

Asymptotically Stable ◽

Globally Asymptotically Stable ◽

The Impact ◽

Globally Stable ◽

Disease Free

In this paper, we give a compartment model to discuss the influence of media coverage to the spreading and controlling of infectious disease in a given region. The model exhibits two equilibria: a disease-free and a unique endemic equilibrium. Stability analysis of the models shows that the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if the reproduction number (ℝ0), which depends on parameters, is less than unity. But if ℝ0 > 1, it is shown that a unique endemic equilibrium appears, which is asymptotically stable. On a special case, the endemic equilibrium is globally stable. We discuss the role of media coverage on the spreading based on the theory results.

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