Abstract
Objective: In contrast to the drug situation in the rest of the world, synthetic drugs, rather than traditional drugs, have been the dominant abused drugs in China since 2019. However, the public misconception that synthetic drugs are not as addictive as traditional drugs, such as opioids and the scarcity of specific measurement instruments, have hindered the clinical diagnosis and treatment of synthetic drug abusers, thus the development of a localized instrument to evaluate dependence on synthetic drugs is in urgently needed.Method: Using a sample of 618 Chinese synthetic drug abusers (Mean age = 34.69 years; 44.17% female), the present study developed and examined the psychometric properties of a self-reporting instrument, the Synthetic Drug Dependence Scale (SDDS), which consists of four subscales: physical dependence, psychological dependence, health injury, and social function injury.Results: The SDDS revealed a three-factor model structure (weighted root mean square residual (WRMR) = 0.876, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.965, Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = 0.953, and Root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.070), with good internal consistency (composite reliability = 0.912, alfa = 0.801) and convergent validity. Elevated scores on the SDDS were associated with a higher level of reward sensitivity, punishment sensitivity, and stronger impulsivity. Interestingly, psychological dependence was the only significant predictor (p < 0.05) of criterion variables compared with the other three subscales, implying the important role of psychological factors in synthetic drugs dependence. Adequate measurement equivalence across sex, age (18–30 and 31–57 years old), and employment group (employed and unemployed) was also established.Conclusion: The SDDS appears to be an effective and reliable instrument that could be used to further investigate the characteristics of synthetic and traditional drug dependence, promoting a deeper understanding of the physical and psychological roles in drug dependence.
Highlights
Synthetic drugs, compared with traditional drugs derived from natural plants, are artificially synthesized from chemical substances (Sacco and Finklea, 2012), accompanied by alarming health and society problems
For the item discrimination analyses, significant group differences were observed for all items (p < 0.001, Hedges’ g = 4.993) and participants in the high-synthetic drug dependence group scored significantly higher than those in the low-synthetic drug dependence group on the Synthetic Drug Dependence Scale (SDDS) total score (p < 0.001)
Results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicated that two-factor structure yielded good fit to the data: χ2/df = 107.024/43, weighted root mean square residual (WRMR) = 0.928, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.961, Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = 0.951, and Root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.071 [0.055, 0.089]
Summary
Synthetic drugs, compared with traditional drugs derived from natural plants, are artificially synthesized from chemical substances (Sacco and Finklea, 2012), accompanied by alarming health and society problems. Synthetic drug abuse leads to neurological changes, such as white matter abnormalities, cognitive impairment, (Morgan and Curran, 2012), and psychotic symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations (Stoica and Felthous, 2013). It is worthy to note that drug abuse is a global challenge that differs in terms of its performance and characteristics among different countries and regions (Kumar and Mittal, 2020). As of 2018, the global number of past-year synthetic drug users has grown to over 48 million (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2020), until now, most studies have focused on drug problems in Western countries using research models designed for Western countries, despite these countries representing only a small fraction of the population of the world (West et al, 2019). In stark contrast, faced with language barriers and resource constraints, non-western studies have received little attention and interpretation, let alone the further application and amelioration, which may come to a standstill
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