Modeling for predicting craving beliefs of drug use based on negative psychological symptoms, with the mediating role of difficulty in regulating emotion in methamphetamine-abusing men

Methamphetamine abuse has caused problems in the prevention and treatment program due to its destructive effects on the brain and intense temptation with significant psychiatric symptoms. Lack of emotion regulation skills along with dysfunctional cognitive beliefs increases the desire to use methamphetamine. Emotion regulation in methamphetamine abusers has been studied in previous studies, but the study that examines the craving beliefs of drug use based on negative psychological symptoms with the mediating role of emotion regulation difficulty in the researched population. Slow, not found.

This study was conducted with the aim of modeling the prediction of craving beliefs of methamphetamine use based on negative psychological symptoms with the mediating role of difficulty regulating excitement in men abusing methamphetamine.

The method of the present study was descriptive-correlation, structural equation modeling. The statistical population of the study included all male methamphetamine users aged 20 to 45 living in addiction treatment centers affiliated to the Isfahan Welfare organization in 1401-1400, and the sample included 262 people who were selected by available sampling method. The data collection tools included three questionnaires: Craving believes questionnaire (Beck and Clark, 1993), Stress, Anxiety, Depression Scale (Lovibond and Lovibond, 1995), Diffiiculties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz and Romer, 2004) and for analysis The data were also used from structural equation modeling test and path analysis to check the fit of the presented model with the obtained data and SMARTPLS-3 software.

The findings of this research showed the causal model of drug craving beliefs based on negative psychological symptoms has a good fit with the mediating role of emotion regulation difficulty in methamphetamine users living in addiction treatment centers in Isfahan Province. (P>0.05).

According to the findings obtained in the current research that the weak emotional self-regulation of people in the long term causes their ineffectiveness in controlling addiction withdrawal and this eventually causes the influence of tempting beliefs on the continuation of drug abuse, therefore it is suggested to reduce the craving beliefs of drug use, used training methods to improve emotion regulation.