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In the final week of March 2020, 2.8 million Canadians were away from their usual places of work and engaging in remote and/or telework to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 (Statistics Canada, 2020). The Government of Canada's Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) were no exception, with most members from the regular force (Reg F), the primary reserve force (P Res), and the DND public service (DND PS) working from home. The COVID-19 Defence Team Survey was administered from April 29th, 2020, and May 22nd, 2020, to gain insight into work, health, and family-related challenges since the onset of the pandemic and change in work arrangements. Responses from five open-ended questions were qualitatively analyzed to determine general themes of concern regarding work, personal, and family related challenges, stress-management and coping strategies, and recommendations for improving the work situation and personal well-being. Given the different roles and conditions of employment, responses of the different groups or "components" of respondents (Reg F, P Res, DND PS) were compared to identify common and unique challenges to inform targeted organizational responses. A total of 26,207 members (Reg F = 13,668, 52.2%; P Res = 5,052, 19.3%; DND PS = 7,487, 28.6%) responded to the survey's five open-ended questions, which yielded a total of 75,000 open-ended responses. When asked about work-related challenges, respondents' most common challenges included dissatisfaction with technology/software, work arrangements, ergonomics, work-life balance, communication within the organization, and the uncertainties regarding career development. In terms of personal and/or family-related challenges, the most common challenges included social isolation, the impact of the pandemic on mental health, school closures and homeschooling, caring for vulnerable family members, and childcare concerns. The most common stress-management and coping strategies included exercise, spending time outdoors, communicating or spending time with family members, household chores/projects, mind-body wellness exercises, and playing games. The most common recommendations made by respondents to improve their work- or personal-related situations included improving technological capabilities, streamlining communication, providing hardware and software necessary to ensure comfortable ergonomics, the provision of flexibility in terms of telework schedules, return-to-work decisions, and the expansion of benefits and access to childcare services. In terms of differences among the components, DND PS personnel were most likely to report dissatisfaction with technological changes and ergonomics, and to recommend improving these technological limitations to maximize productivity. Reg F members, on the other hand, were most likely to recommend increased support and access to childcare, and both Reg F and P Res members were more likely to mention that increased benefits and entitlements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic would be ameliorative. The results of this study highlight several important facts about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on personnel working in large, diverse organizations. For example, advancements in organizational technological capabilities were highlighted herein, and these are likely to grow to maintain productivity should remote work come to be used more extensively in the long-term. This study also highlighted the importance of flexibility and accommodation in relation to individual needs - a trend that was already underway but has taken on greater relevance and urgency in light of the pandemic. This is clearly essential to the organization's role in supporting the well-being of personnel and their families. Clear and streamlined communication regarding organizational changes and support services is also essential to minimize uncertainty and to provide useful supports for coping with this and other stressful situations., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Goldenberg, Denomme and Lee.)

By some accounts, as many as 93% of individuals diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) or psychopathy also meet criteria for some form of substance use disorder (SUD). This high level of comorbidity, combined with an overlapping biopsychosocial profile, and potentially interacting features, has made it difficult to delineate the shared/unique characteristics of each disorder. Moreover, while rarely acknowledged, both SUD and antisociality exist as highly heterogeneous disorders in need of more targeted parcellation. While emerging data-driven nosology for psychiatric disorders (e.g., Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP)) offers the opportunity for a more systematic delineation of the externalizing spectrum, the interrogation of large, complex neuroimaging-based datasets may require data-driven approaches that are not yet widely employed in psychiatric neuroscience. With this in mind, the proposed article sets out to provide an introduction into machine learning methods for neuroimaging that can help parse comorbid, heterogeneous externalizing samples. The modest machine learning work conducted to date within the externalizing domain demonstrates the potential utility of the approach but remains highly nascent. Within the paper, we make suggestions for how future work can make use of machine learning methods, in combination with emerging psychiatric nosology systems, to further diagnostic and etiological understandings of the externalizing spectrum. Finally, we briefly consider some challenges that will need to be overcome to encourage further progress in the field., (© The Author(s) 2021.)

Abnormalities in the spectral power of offenders' neural oscillations have been noted within select Resting-State Networks (RSNs); however, no study has yet evaluated the influence of cocaine dependence, drug use severity, and psychopathic traits on these abnormalities. To this end, the present study compared rest-related power spectral characteristics between two groups of offenders (with and without a DSM-IV-TR cocaine-dependence diagnosis) and a non-offender control group. Results indicated that both offender groups presented with lower low frequency power ratio (LFPR) scores (i.e. across all RSNs) than non-offenders. These differences in LFPR scores were due to both higher high-frequency power (0.15-0.25 Hz; within seven (in non-dependent offenders) and five (in cocaine-dependent offenders) of eight investigated networks) and decreased low-frequency power (0.01-0.10 Hz; within six (in non-dependent offenders) and one (in cocaine-dependent offenders) of eight investigated networks) compared to non-offenders. Thus, both cocaine-dependent and non-dependent offenders displayed abnormal neural oscillations, suggesting that these oscillatory abnormalities could exist as neurobiological features associated with offender status. Offenders' LFPR levels correlated with lifetime years of cocaine use, but not with the level of psychopathic traits. These findings supplement our knowledge regarding the influence of substance use on resting-state activity in offenders; moreover, they provide further indication of the importance of evaluating shared/unique variance associated with drug use and pyschopathic personality traits., (Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

While the centrality of withdrawal in the diagnosis of addiction has been decreasing with each successive edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, psychometric and neurobiological evidence provides withdrawal a central role in the development and maintenance of addiction. The current study offers insight into these conflicting positions by using secondary analyses to assess how a history of DSM-assessed withdrawal influences the magnitude of bias in neural reactivity to drug- and/or food-related reward cues. To this end, we separated an existing sample of cocaine-dependent participants (Denomme et al., 2018) into those with (WD) and without (N-WD) a history of withdrawal, and compared food- and drug-cue reactivity between these groups, and to a non-dependent control group (ND). Analyses indicated that biases in neural reactivity towards drug- versus food-related cues only occurred among the WD participants (within: left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, left anterior cingulate cortex, left orbitofrontal cortex, left caudate nucleus, and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex). Thus, withdrawal status may be an important factor to consider when interpreting dependence-related biases in neural reactivity following reward-related cues. Interestingly, while N-WD participants did not show these broad biases in neural reactivity, the magnitude of their bias correlated positively with years of lifetime substance use history, particularly when psychopathic traits were low. It may be that for individuals who's addiction has not yet reached a compulsive state (see Wise and Koob, 2014), the magnitude of their drug > food bias could serve as a valuable biomarker of addiction severity., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors report no conflict of interests., (Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Previous studies suggest that psychopathic traits commonly present as comorbid with substance use disorders. Moreover, neuroimaging and psychometric findings suggest that psychopathic traits may predispose individuals to a sensitized reward response to drugs. Given that substance use disorders are characterized by a neurocognitive bias toward drug-reward relative to non-drug reward, it is possible that heightened psychopathic characteristics may further predispose to this processing bias. To evaluate this possibility, we assessed psychopathic traits (measured using the PCL-R; Hare, 2003) in 105 probationers/parolees and evaluated the relationship between PCL-R scores, lifetime duration of drug use, and biases in neural response to drug- compared to food-related videos. Psychopathic traits (potentially driven by interpersonal/affective traits) were positively correlated with drug > food reactivity within the right insula and left amygdala. In addition, psychopathic traits modulated the relationship between drug use and drug > food reactivity within the left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, right insula, and left caudate nucleus. Specifically, lifetime duration of drug use correlated positively with drug > food reactivity in participants with lower levels of psychopathic traits and correlated negatively with drug > food reactivity in individuals with higher levels of psychopathic traits. These results help reconcile prior studies on psychopathy and drug-stimulus processing and provide neurocognitive support for the notion that psychopathic traits serve as an underlying risk factor for substance use disorders. These results suggest that different treatment regimens for substance abuse for individuals with higher or lower levels of psychopathy may be beneficial and suggest that reduction of neurocognitive biases to drug-related stimuli may offer useful targets for future treatment protocols.

There is a growing body of research demonstrating that families of individuals with substance use and concurrent disorders (SUCD) experience a wide range of biopsychosocial problems that significantly impedes their quality of life and health. However, there has been a relative lack of treatment programs primarily focused on improving the well-being and quality of life of these family members. The current study assessed the efficacy of such a program at reducing stress, increasing perceived social support from family and friends, and increasing general, dyadic, and self-rated family functioning within these concerned family members. A sample of 125 family members of individuals with SUCDs was recruited, of which 97 participated in the treatment program and 28 were used as the comparison group. Results indicated that the treatment program significantly reduced stress, increased perceived social support from family and friends, and increased general, dyadic and self-rated family functioning. A perceived personal benefits questionnaire demonstrated that participants had a better understanding of SUCDs, better coping capabilities in regard to emotional difficulties, adopted stronger coping methods, participated in more leisure activities, and improved their relationship with the individual with a SUCD. The results of the current study further demonstrate the need to implement more of these family-member oriented psycho-educational treatment programs., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)