BackgroundHealthy university students have been shown to use psychoactive substances, expecting them to be functional means for enhancing their cognitive capacity, sometimes over and above an essentially proficient level. This behavior called Neuroenhancement (NE) has not yet been integrated into a behavioral theory that is able to predict performance. Job Demands Resources (JD-R) Theory for example assumes that strain (e.g. burnout) will occur and influence performance when job demands are high and job resources are limited at the same time. The aim of this study is to investigate whether or not university students’ self-reported NE can be integrated into JD-R Theory’s comprehensive approach to psychological health and performance.Methods1,007 students (23.56 ± 3.83 years old, 637 female) participated in an online survey. Lifestyle drug, prescription drug, and illicit substance NE together with the complete set of JD-R variables (demands, burnout, resources, motivation, and performance) were measured. Path models were used in order to test our data’s fit to hypothesized main effects and interactions.ResultsJD-R Theory could successfully be applied to describe the situation of university students. NE was mainly associated with the JD-R Theory’s health impairment process: Lifestyle drug NE (p < .05) as well as prescription drug NE (p < .001) is associated with higher burnout scores, and lifestyle drug NE aggravates the study demands-burnout interaction. In addition, prescription drug NE mitigates the protective influence of resources on burnout and on motivation.ConclusionAccording to our results, the uninformed trying of NE (i.e., without medical supervision) might result in strain. Increased strain is related to decreased performance. From a public health perspective, intervention strategies should address these costs of non-supervised NE. With regard to future research we propose to model NE as a means to reach an end (i.e. performance enhancement) rather than a target behavior itself. This is necessary to provide a deeper understanding of the behavioral roots and consequences of the phenomenon.

Objectives: The main goal of this research focused on the development and validation of three instruments designed to assess athletes' self-regulatory efficacy in team contexts, team collective efficacy and team moral disengagement with relevance for doping use across three European countries. Design: The research relied on three distinct studies. A first qualitative study focused on item development. The second study assessed the factor structure and internal reliability of each of the new team instruments. The third study provided evidence for instrument validity by assessing the hypothesis that efficacy measures and moral disengagement would contribute to team athletes' doping intentions. The latter two studies also focused on the relations among measures and on measurement reliability, both within and across countries. Method: The first study relied on focus group data collected from twenty-one team sport professionals (mean age = 34; SD = 11.65). Four hundred and fourteen adolescent athletes (mean age = 16.69; SD = 1.55) participated in the second study, whereas seven hundred forty-nine adolescent team athletes (mean age = 16.43; SD = 1.69) participated in the third study. For the latter two studies, team athletes were recruited across Italy, Germany and Greece and provided data on the new team measures. Only athletes participating in the third study provided data on doping intentions. Results: The findings of the three studies supported the empirical goals of the investigation and provided evidence for the factor structure, reliability and validity of the team instruments. Furthermore, multi-group findings supported the hypothesis that the new instruments would have equivalent measurement and validity characteristics across the three European countries. The conclusions focus on the conceptual and practical implications of these findings

BackgroundNeuroenhancement (NE), the use of psychoactive substances in order to enhance a healthy individual’s cognitive functioning from a proficient to an even higher level, is prevalent in student populations. According to the strength model of self-control, people fail to self-regulate and fall back on their dominant behavioral response when finite self-control resources are depleted. An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that ego-depletion will prevent students who are unfamiliar with NE from trying it.Findings130 undergraduates, who denied having tried NE before (43% female, mean age = 22.76 ± 4.15 years old), were randomly assigned to either an ego-depletion or a control condition. The dependent variable was taking an “energy-stick” (a legal nutritional supplement, containing low doses of caffeine, taurine and vitamin B), offered as a potential means of enhancing performance on the bogus concentration task that followed. Logistic regression analysis showed that ego-depleted participants were three times less likely to take the substance, OR = 0.37, p = .01.ConclusionThis experiment found that trying NE for the first time was more likely if an individual’s cognitive capacities were not depleted. This means that mental exhaustion is not predictive for NE in students for whom NE is not the dominant response. Trying NE for the first time is therefore more likely to occur as a thoughtful attempt at self-regulation than as an automatic behavioral response in stressful situations. We therefore recommend targeting interventions at this inter-individual difference. Students without previous reinforcing NE experience should be provided with information about the possible negative health outcomes of NE. Reconfiguring structural aspects in the academic environment (e.g. lessening workloads) might help to deter current users.

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Background To estimate the effect of strabismus (squinting) on mental health and health-related quality of life aspects in children and adolescents. Methods Data from the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents KiGGS (2003–2006 baseline survey; N = 14,835, aged 3 to 17 years, 49% girls) were examined. The presence of strabismus was derived by parental questionnaire, and health-related quality of life and mental health were investigated with the KINDL-R and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Associations between strabismus and outcomes were analyzed using multivariable linear and logistic regression models. Results Of 12,989 children without missing data, 579 children (4.5% of the sample) were reported to have strabismus. Children with strabismus had lower scores in the parent-reported KINDL-R total scale (adjusted beta = − 1.02; 95%CI: -1.86 to − 0.18; p = 0.018) and sub-scale ‘friends’ (adjusted beta = − 2.18; 95%CI: -3.56 to -0.80; p = 0.002) compared to children without strabismus. The presence of strabismus was also associated with more mental health problems like ‘hyperactivity/inattention’ (adjusted OR = 1.50; 95%CI: 1.14 to 1.98; p = 0.005), and ‘peer problems’ (adjusted OR = 1.35; 95%-CI: 1.05 to 1.74; p = 0.018) as reported by parents. Conclusions Strabismus in children and adolescents is associated with lower health-related quality of life. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12955-019-1144-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common mental disorders in childhood and adolescence and is associated with functional, psychosocial and cognitive impairment. As part of the second wave of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (2014-2017), parents of children and adolescents aged between 3 and 17 years reported whether their child was diagnosed with ADHD by a physician or psychologist. Overall, 4.4% of children and adolescents have been diagnosed with ADHD in Germany. In comparison, the KiGGS baseline study (2003-2006) showed a reduction of lifetime ADHD diagnoses of almost one percentage point over a period of ten years. The reduction of parent-reported ADHD diagnoses primarily occurred among 3- to 8-year old children and boys. The results are discussed in terms of health promotion and the introduction of health care measures.