As laws regarding medical and recreational cannabis use are changing across the United States, one must begin to understand the effects among individuals with chronic pain. Specifically, it is unclear how legalization may change their use of marijuana and opioids to self-medicate or for recreational use. To address these questions,...
Vitamin D sufficiency supports cardiovascular health and lower cancer risk. Rates of vitamin D insufficiency vary by racial/ethnic group, in part because skin pigment limits sunlight penetration. However race/ethnicity is an unreliable marker of vitamin D deficiency, given individual differences in skin pigment, or phototype, and other characteristics. Clarifying associations...
Background: Individuals rapidly infer character traits and behaviors through the process of facial perception. Perceptions of trustworthiness, accurate or not, completed by authorities in the criminal justice system may have implications for individuals suspected of crimes, including harsher or longer sentencing decisions. Objective: The present study concerned how the presence...
Mental health issues such as depression are increasingly prevalent in college students. However, research on disparities in mental health problems in students of color in college has been limited. In the present study, we used the Healthy Minds Study (HMS) data collected on mental health of college students from 2018-2019...
Background. Flourishing is negatively related with depression, but has been proposed as a separate axis and an independent aspect of overall mental health. One factor that has been shown to affect both depression and flourishing is racial discrimination. This study hypothesizes that, in young undergraduate women of color, discrimination experiences...
Through the use of daily online surveys, this study investigated the weekly trends associated with college binge drinking. It also investigated the relationship between personality risk factors and binge drinking. Personality risk factors were assessed using the TCI measures of novelty seeking and harm avoidance, and the ATQ measure of...
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a mood disorder that is characterized by depressive symptoms that onset and remit at the same times each year. Whereas few people (about 1%) experience problems severe enough to be labeled SAD, many people (estimates range from 30%-90%) may experience mild to moderate changes in...
Suicide is a leading cause of death amongst adolescents, and transgender and gender diverse youth are at especially high risk for suicidal ideation and attempt compared with cisgender peers. Using established ideation-to-action models of suicide and the Minority Stress Model, this project used the 2019 results of the Oregon Healthy...
Seasonality is defined as a change in mood and behavior with the seasons. Research shows there is a possible connection between vitamin D levels and mood (Murphy & Wagner, 2008; Lansdowne & Provost, 1998). Given that vitamin D is produced when skin is exposed to sunlight and varies with sun...
Previous literature consistently demonstrates a link between binge drinking and sexual assault among college students. State alcohol control policies, particularly tax policies, are established as important predictors of college binge drinking but have not been examined in relation to sexual assault. This study used merged data on student demographics and...
Introduction: Potential public health impacts of recreational cannabis legalization (RCL) are a growing concern, particularly for young adults. Some evidence suggests that following RCL, cannabis use increased, whereas alcohol use decreased among young adults. Co-use patterns have not been found to change following RCL in this age group. However, RCLs...
People of all ages and ethnicities implicitly use others’ facial characteristics to evaluate their personalities. The field of person perception has identified several mechanisms through which one’s facial appearance may be associated with one’s behavior. For example, a person with an untrustworthy-looking face may elicit negative reactions from social partners,...
study investigated the validity of the Perceiving Emotions branch of the Mayer-Salovey-
Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). This was conducted through a correlational analysis with
three previously validated measures of nonverbal communication proficiency; The Profile of Nonverbal
Communication (PONS), the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-2 (DANVA2), and the Affective
Communication...
Objective: Alcohol and cannabis use and co-use among college students is prevalent in the United States (Bravo et al., 2021). These substances have been linked to poor collegiate academic performance in past research. The present study examines varying levels of single-substance alcohol use and alcohol and cannabis co-use in their...
Objective: In 2018, suicide was the leading cause of death for individuals between the ages of 10-24 in Oregon (OHA, 2019) and was the second leading cause of death for this age range in 2020 (OHA, 2021). In 2019, 12% of Black high school students reported a suicide attempt in...
Early adulthood is a time of transition when large segments of the population embrace new roles and show decreases in behaviors and problems thought to underlie suicide risk. Still, other segments show emergent or worsening psychopathology per-haps exacerbated by age-related disconnection from prior relational and institutional supports. Suicide prevention efforts...
Vegetation patterns and species distributions are strongly linked to soil moisture regimes, and populations within a species from contrasting climatic regimes could exhibit differences in the degree to which certain functional traits related to establishment are expressed. Tree seedling survival is crucial for forest regeneration, and thus may be a...
Marijuana (MJ) is a widely used illicit substance among adolescents and young adults. Frequent MJ use has been associated with impairments in cognitive flexibility and inhibition, both of which play important roles in decision-making. However, the impact of frequent MJ on decision-making performance is mixed and not well understood. The...