Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) and HIV are both critical and interconnected public health issues, particularly among individuals who are justice-involved. Individuals under community supervision face significant obstacles in accessing the prevention and treatment services necessary for both OUD and HIV. Although harm reduction strategies such as Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) for OUD and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention have proven effective, these interventions remain underutilized and difficult to access. This research explores barriers to service delivery that service providers face in delivering OUD and HIV care to justice-involved individuals with substance use disorder. Qualitative analysis of data sourced from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded study, Addressing Risk through Community Treatment for Infectious Disease and Opioid Use Disorder Now (ACTION) was coded with deductive methods. By identifying systemic, structural, and social barriers, the study aims to understand the challenges that affect care delivery. Key findings included stigma surrounding PrEP, lack of awareness about available services, delays in ART (anti-retroviral treatment) initiation, transportation barriers, judicial resistance to MAT and punitive legal approach to OUD. Addressing these barriers is essential to improving health outcomes and reducing the impact of HIV and OUD in justice-involved individuals, drawing on service provider insights to inform future policy changes.

For much of human evolutionary history, women have relied on their men for direct benefits like resources and protection. Importantly, men are unlikely to provide these benefits without receiving something in return. One potential strategy women may use to secure these resources is offering men sexual access in exchange for investment. Given that sex is a highly valuable resource for men, as their reproductive success largely depends on the number of women who are willing to grant him sexual access, they should be willing to accept obtaining sexual access in exchange for their investment. For women in harsh environments, having an investing male figure is particularly crucial to survival. As such, we should expect that women’s sexual openness may vary depending on whether they are in a stable or harsh environment as being more sexually open may be advantageous for women who are in harsh environments. Thus, the present research aims to examine the impact of environmental harshness on women’s sexual openness. We predict that women who are in harsh environments will be more sexually open than women who are in stable environments. Data are forthcoming.

Emotion regulation capability is a major contributor to various areas of functioning, including well-being and mental health(citation). Previous research (Rusk et al., 2011) shows that people differ on how motivated they are to demonstrate their ability to control their emotions (performance goals) and how motivated they are to learn to control their emotions better (learning goals). The current study explored the relationship between beliefs about controllability and usefulness of emotions and how much the participants endorsed higher performance and learning emotion regulation goals. The study also explored how emotion regulation goals and emotion beliefs correlated with various indicators of well-being. The initial correlational study showed that believing emotions can be controlled moderately predicted higher performance-avoidance goals for emotion regulation, while believing that emotions were generally useful had a weak negative association with learning emotion regulation goals. Additionally, higher emotion controllability beliefs, as well as higher performance-avoidance goals, predicted lower well-being. A second study was conducted to assess the causal relationship between emotion controllability beliefs and performance-avoidance emotion regulation goals.

Research looking at the association between hormonal birth control and mental health outcomes has primarily looked at what happens to women when they start using hormonal birth control. However, researchers have not begun to delve deep into the influence of discontinuing hormonal birth control on women’s mental health outcomes. Therefore, this study aimed to address this gap in the literature by investigating mental health outcomes of those who have discontinued hormonal birth control. Participants included women who had never used hormonal birth control (HBC), were currently using hormonal birth control, or had discontinued using hormonal birth control. All participants answered survey questions related to their current mental health outcomes. Results revealed that there were no differences in trait anxiety between never HBC users, current HBC users, or previous HBC users. However, there were differences in depression levels among the groups, such that individuals who had never used HBC reported higher levels of depression than previous HBC users. Therefore, these findings suggest that hormonal birth control usage may act as a neuroprotective intervention against depression during a developmentally critical time in which mood disorders commonly arise.

Self-recognition is a key indicator of higher cognitive processing and is atypical in children with autism spectrum disorder. A normal hallmark of typical social development requires knowledge of self and others. Self-recognition has been tested in a variety of different species and has been seen in a small number of mammals, birds, and fish. It is classically demonstrated by visual recognition using the mirror mark test. Parishar et al. (2021) previously examined self-recognition in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata), and despite some potentially promising findings, none of the birds in their experiments passed the mirror mark test. This study sought to extend previous research by exploring whether zebra finches demonstrate self-recognition using a more thorough and exhaustive procedure exposing zebra finches to a mirror following the application of visible mark. Six male zebra finches were habituated to an experimental cage and were exposed to four different conditions (mirror, male bird, female bird, control). Then, two analyses were performed: Experiment 1 examined whether zebra finches change the spectrotemporal features of song in each of the four conditions, and Experiment 2 assessed whether birds attempted to inspect or remove a mark only visible when birds viewed their reflection in a mirror in each condition. Observations suggest that some birds may show attention towards the mark test because as seen by mark-directed behavior. Song characteristics will be explored to determine if zebra finches modify their song structure when facing a mirror compared to singing to a male bird, a female bird, or an empty cage (control). This would provide evidence supporting self-recognition if the singing behavior directed toward the mirror is distinct from that toward a conspecific. This study explores whether self-recognition is observed in zebra finches, providing insight into evolutionary and cognitive mechanisms of self-recognition that can be used for future studies in the neurobiology of social and cognitive behaviors.