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Background: Medical students face a wide variety of stressors throughout their medical education, including academic, financial, health, and relationship concerns. Past research has found increased odds of depression and stress about educational debt. Married medical students have been found to have lower stress levels than their single counterparts, although more research is needed to understand the scope of financial stressors in this population. Objective: This study explores financial safety net as a predictor of medical student subjective happiness. Methods: This study sampled 256 medical students at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in February 2017 to explore the association between perceived financial safety net and subjective happiness. OLS and logistic regression analysis were used to explore the relationship between subjective happiness and financial safety net while adjusting for other factors. Results: In adjusted logistic and OLS regression models, students who reported that they 'very likely' could turn to parents or family for help with an unforeseen expense also showed greater subjective happiness compared to those who perceived they were less than very likely to receive financial support. Conclusions: Perceived financial safety net demonstrated a persistent association with medical student subjective happiness, suggesting that economic insecurity may detrimentally impact medical students., Background Medical school in the United States is well known for high stress levels and high costs. Previous studies have established higher than average levels of depression among medical students [...]

This introduction offers a primer for this special edition of the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. The purpose is to provide an interdisciplinary platform for scholars and practitioners to communicate perspectives of criminal justice, criminology, and law; public policy and administration, economics and political science; social work and sociology; behavioral health, counseling and psychology; public health, emergency medicine, and psychiatry around diversion. While disciplines share objectives of diversion as (1) rehabilitation, (2) efficient case processing, and (3) reducing resources, the defining and reporting of diversion differs. Justice-involved individuals with mental health issues making successful re-entry into the civil society, however, becomes convoluted. Diversion in practice has taken many shapes. Diversion in theory has taken many meanings. This special edition offers a variety of empirical and theoretical articles that attempt to provide clarity to an often implemented and understudied area of criminal justice and health care. Interviews with street-level officials, quantitative analyses of programs, and philosophical challenges to innate assumptions about individuals and systems are seen from a wide variety of scholars. The authors showcase their varied backgrounds with graduate students, university faculty, and practitioners, offering the fields of criminal justice and health care insight into diversion at all levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conclusion provides a brief synopsis of the research articles presented in this special edition of The Journal of Contemporary Justice. The research findings clearly demonstrate that when the objective of diversion is sought by diversion-based programs where the criminal justice and health care systems intersect, processes and services frequently break down. As this collection of articles highlights, our collective understanding of diversion is siloed by academic discipline; thus, the broader picture of diversion remains muddled. It remains muddled because the reporting of diversion is scattered across disciplinary journals where a more robust understanding of diversion becomes unwieldy if not impossible for researchers and practitioners alike without sifting through multiple books, journals, manuscripts, and websites. Therefore, diversion will continue to elude efficacy without the coordination and cooperation of numerous disciplines spanning both the criminal justice and health care systems diversion. As this collection of articles strongly suggests, there is a need to create a transdisciplinary understanding of diversion as well as publication outlets so best practices can be developed and shared in one place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substance use disorder (SUD) stigma persists in society despite a movement toward people-first language in the mental health field. Stigma creates barriers to treatment and marginalizes already at-risk populations. Opioid use disorder (OUD) is of particular relevance to this discussion because recent increases in OUD can be traced to iatrogenic origins, and as such, power differentials between prescriber and patient may complicate stigma and/or create additional barriers for those who develop opioid dependence. We examine the shift to use destigmatizing language surrounding OUD, explores the unique power dynamics associated with the rise of OUD prevalence, and presents a manifest content analysis of phrases related to OUD to observe the emergence of opioid use as a public health issue. Whereas SUD has long had visibility in public health discourse, OUD has emerged as a major theme in this discourse as its prevalence and mortality rate reached epidemic levels. We advocate for public health practice and research discourse to more uniformly adopt destigmatizing language alongside clinical SUD practitioners toward the goal of reducing stigma and barriers to treatment seeking for OUD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the association between hematologic inflammatory markers derived from complete blood counts and obesity. We undertook a cross-sectional study that included self-reported healthy subjects above the age of 18 years from the 2011–2016 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a US population database. Study parameters included mean corpuscular volume, red cell distribution width, mean platelet volume, total platelet count, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio, and systemic immune-inflammation index. Body mass index was used as an index of obesity and was correlated with each hematologic inflammatory marker. Our analysis found a statistically significant association between each inflammatory parameter and higher body mass indices. We demonstrated an association between complete blood count–derived indices of inflammation and obesity, and these results provide the basis for future studies using complete blood count–derived variables and outcomes in patients with some chronic diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]