Substance use and misuse in the Croatian Army Special Forces: prevalence and influencing factors

Abstract

Objectives: In addition to being a serious health-hazard, substance-use-and-misuse (SUM) in military forces negatively influences physical fitness and army readiness. The aim of this study was to define the prevalence of SUM, which includes cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and multiple SUM (i.e. practice of daily smoking and harmful alcohol drinking), and factors influencing SUM in the Croatian Special Army Forces (SAF). Materials and Methods: We studied 73 SAF members. A self-administered validated questionnaire was used to gather socio-demographic and military-professionrelated data, and SUM factors. The associations between studied variables were established by the Chi 2 test, and forward conditional logistic regression (FCLR). Results: With less than 40% of daily smokers, smoking was within expected values. Almost 80% of the examinees reported no binge drinking, while 54% reported harmful drinking according to the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test scale. Paternity and education level were negatively associated with daily smoking, while higher incidence of daily smoking was found for privates and those who practiced harmful drinking (all at p < 0.05). The FCLR demonstrated a higher risk of harmful alcohol consumption for younger commissioned officers (OR for military rank = 5.54, 95% CI: 2.19-13.99; OR for age = 0.85, 95% CI: 0.76-0.95). Conclusion: Although SUM incidence was not alarming compared to the overall population and the previously reported military data, additional efforts are necessary in order to decrease cigarette consumption. The study showed that protective/risk structure of the substance misuse in the military should be investigated specifically with regard to particular military services, corps, and socio-cultural environment.

Disordered eating, amenorrhea, and substance use and misuse among professional ballet dancers: Preliminary analysis

“…High alcohol consumption is a common strategy to cope with occupational stress, and the simultaneous use of analgesics and alcohol in sport and exercise is a known problem [5,13,14]. But, to the best of our knowledge, this is the 1st study to report this among ballet dancers.…”

Cigarette smoking among 17–18 year old adolescents – Prevalence and association with sociodemographic, familial, sport, and scholastic factors

“…However, sports participation is often uncritically suggested as a protective factor against substance misuse. One frequent explanation is that organised activities such as sports may be protective by facilitating prosocial group membership, while other explanations highlight the incompatibility of physical exercise and cigarettes due to the known adverse impact of cigarette smoking upon fitness capacities [16]. However, investigations have provided inconsistent findings about the relationship between sports participation and smoking among adolescents [4,7,8].…”

“…Additionally, nonparametric variables were assessed in terms of reliability by calculating the percentage share of the equally responded queries. This is a common procedure in defining the consistency of measurement for questionnaires and investigations using surveys [15,16]. Gender differences were evaluated using the Kruskal-Wallis Anova (KW) for all predictors except for the SCSRF score, the Chi 2 test -for cigarette smoking, and the Student's t-test -for the SCSRF score.…”

Knowledge and Use of Nutritional Supplements in Different Dance Disciplines

“…The author of the questionnaire is Damir Sekulić, PhD. The questionnaire is validated, standardized and repeatedly used in various surveys (Šeme, 2016;Zaletel et al, 2015;Sekulić, Bjelanović, Pehar, Pelivan, & Zenić, 2014a;Sekulić, Milanović, Bok, Jukić, & Matika, 2014b;Kondrič, Sekulić, Uljević, Gabrilo, & Ţvan, 2013;Šajber, Rodek, Escalante, Olujić, & Sekulić, 2013).…”