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Abstract: This paper describes a multi-dimensional, ongoing approach to evaluation in a sex therapy training program. The Yale Sex Therapy Training program set out to train psychotherapists working in public agencies throughout Connecticut who would meet or surpass pre-determined standards for sex therapists. Because sex therapy is a new discipline, it was deemed essential that program evaluation be developed and carried out from the very beginnings of the program and throughout its course. Evaluative findings proved essential to monitoring the quality of teaching and supervisory efforts, in assessing change in knowledge and professional activity of trainees, and in measuring impact upon the communities served. Continuous feedback led to changes in program content and format through identification of needs and problem. The experience in the Yale program confirms the recommendations of others regarding the conduct of a continuing education program. These findings strongly imply that multi-dimensional, ongoing evaluation should be an integral component in any continuing education program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Benzodiazepine anti-anxiety agents are the most widely prescribed psychotherapeutic drugs in the United States today. Recent evidence, however, suggests that their use may be decreasing. Methods: We examine the population prevalence and correlates of use of benzodiazepine anxiolytics at the Duke site of the NIMH-sponsored Epidemiologic Catchment Area project. Results: Bivariate analysis of use patterns for the drugs revealed demographic predictors similar to those reported in previous studies: increased likelihood of use by the elderly. Whites, women, the less educated, and the separated or divorced. Use is also associated with symptoms of psychic distress, negative life events, use of health care services, and diagnoses of affective disorder, agoraphobia with panic, and panic disorder. Age, sex, race, education, and marital status remain associated with non-hypnotic benzodiazepine use in a logistic regression analysis. Conclusions: Multivariate analyses of these data indicate that when potential confounding factors are controlled, age, sex, race, education, and marital status are significantly related to benzodiazepine anxiolytic use but the effects of sex and education are mediated by intervening variables. Implications of these findings are discussed particularly in relation to high levels of use in the elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study examined the hypothesized predictive association between illicit drug use and the onset of prescribed psychotherapeutic medicine use. The effect of psychiatric symptoms on this relationship was also explored. Data were gathered retrospectively, through standardized household interviews conducted in 1981 for the Baltimore site of the National Institute of Mental Health Epidemiologic Catchment Area Program. For this analysis, the sample was restricted to 1,716 respondents ages 18-44 at the time of interview, drawn by probability sampling area household residents of all adult ages. Using Cox proportional hazards models, the onset of psychotherapeutic medicine use was modeled as a function of illicit drug use and psychiatric symptoms, both defined as time-dependent covariates. Newly observed in this analysis was an independent association of illicit drug use with psychotherapeutic medicine use, which was unexplained by psychiatric symptoms (relative hazard = 2.61, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 2.15, 3.18). Adjustment for age of onset of alcohol intoxication did not alter the impression that illicit drug users were more likely to initiate use of prescribed psychotherapeutic medicines (relative hazard = 2.52, 95% CI = 2.02, 3.11). (Am J Public Health 1990;80:61-65.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eight hundred volunteers who attended smoking clinics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute from 1964-1965 were followed up five years later to ascertain their current smoking status. From three waves of a mailed questionnaire, plus a telephone campaign, we obtained 559 usable responses. The relationship between smoking status at the five-year follow-up and clinic protocols and selected social and psychological characteristics as determined during the clinics were examined. Of those individuals contacted five years after the clinic, 17.8 per cent were not smoking. Variations in clinic protocol in terms of drugs and education methods had no relation to long-term smoking withdrawal. Several social and psychological variables, however, were related to smoking behavior five years after the clinics. Non-smokers were more likely than smokers to be males, to be older, to have smoked less before the clinic, to have started smoking at a later age, to have a milieu that was supportive of their stopping, and to have fewer indices of neurosis and fewer psychosomatic symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]