What Is Prescription Drug Misuse?

From Nationally Known Pop Stars like Michael Jackson to Prince and among several others, prescription drug misuse has become a wide spread occurrence in the United States. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration states, “Prescription Drug Misuse is defined as intentional or unintentional use of medication without prescription in a way other than prescribed, or the experience or feeling it causes”. (The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, 2015). Whether is intentional due to a medical condition or for other reasons prescription drug misuse can lead to addiction, and abuse of the drug(s). In the Article readings listed, I chose to read and review the topic of Prescription Drug Abuse. I will attempt
In the second article reading “Influences of Motivational contexts on prescription drug misuse and related drug problems” it focused on what positive or negative influences, or environments causes a person to misuse prescription drugs. A study was conducted on 400 young adults’ age ranging between 18-29 years old. More than half of the participants were single and more than half had 4 year college degrees. Each participant had to report misusing prescription drugs a least three times within a six month range, as well as reporting misuse of prescription drugs within three months. Using a wide range of venues in a time space setting, such as the night life scene in NYC, the researchers wanted to find out if (a) what situations or circumstances determine how often and when they misuse the prescription drugs and (b) to examine whether negative, positive, and tempting situations lead to increases in the use of prescription pain killer, sedative, and stimulant misuse (c) if and what motivational contexts influences the frequent misuse of prescription drugs. To collect data for the motivation contexts they used the Inventory of Drug Taking Situations (IDTS). The IDTS has eight subscales such as unpleasant emotions, Physical discomfort, conflict with others, social pressures to use, pleasant times
Control Policy. (2011). Epidemic: Responding to America’s Prescription Drug Abuse Crisis. “Nonmedical prescription drug use among US young adults by education attainment” is an article written about a study conducted on about 36, 781 participants from the ages 18-22 years old. This study was collected over a 12 month period (2009-2010). Data was collected on the participants based on their educational achievement, if they were a current college student, high school graduate or obtained a GED, did not complete high school. They also had to state their age, gender, and where they reside. The purpose if this study was for the researchers to find out whether nonmedical prescription drug use and disorder (Opioid) vary due to education. Also to see if there is a risk in using nonmedical prescription drugs in age/gender and ethnic subgroups and