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Substance use disorders (SUDs) are of great concern for health care providers working with military veteran populations. Systematic evaluation of progress and outcomes within the Veterans Affairs (VA) is a critical component of care provided for the veteran population. The Brief Addiction Monitor (BAM) is a 17-item instrument used within VA to assess substance use and related constructs among veterans participating in SUD care. Initial evaluations, using a version containing continuous items, suggested that the items form three factors reflecting substance use, risk factors, and protective factors. Subsequent work, using the BAM version containing Likert-style items collected from a single VA Medical Center sample, did not support the proposed 3-factor solution. The current study used a nationwide sample of 4955 veterans to evaluate the factor structure of the BAM and its usefulness over time. Exploratory factor analyses conducted did not provide evidence of the originally proposed BAM factor structure but instead supported a 4-factor model (reflecting alcohol use, stress, risk, and stability) formed from 13 of the items. Further analyses conducted within a structural equation modeling framework showed that the four-factor model exhibited invariance across occasions of measurement, although internal consistency was found to be low for most subscales. Results provide caution against using BAM subscale scores to track treatment outcomes over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In studies of explicit memory, researchers have reliably demonstrated that mood-congruent, depressive information is especially likely to be recalled by individuals exhibiting depressed mood. Results from studies of implicit mood-congruent memory in depressed mood, however, have been largely discrepant. The current research reviews 20 studies of implicit mood-congruent memory for emotionally valenced words in the context of dysphoria and clinical depression. Meta-analytic techniques were used to summarize this research. Results indicated that depressive groups exhibited preferential implicit recall of negative information and nondepressed groups exhibited preferential implicit recall of positive information. Also, depressive implicit mood-congruent memory for negative information was associated with recall and encoding tasks that matched with regard to the perceptual versus conceptual processes required. Furthermore, self-relevance emerged as an important moderator for implicit recall in analyses that compared clinically depressed groups to nondepressed groups. These results provide partial support both for the transfer appropriate processing framework of memory and cognitive theories of depression that emphasize self-relevant information. Finally, certain participant characteristics, particularly age and severity of depressive symptoms, emerged as important moderators of the effect of group status on depressive implicit recall biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]