Self-reported Subjective Effects of Analytically Confirmed New Psychoactive Substances Consumed by e-Psychonauts : Protocol for a Longitudinal Study Using a New Internet-Based Methodology
Grifell, Marc (Parc de Salut MAR de Barcelona)
Mir Fuster, Guillem (Asociació Benestar i Desenvolupament. Energy Control)
Ventura, Mireia (Asociació Benestar i Desenvolupament. Energy Control)
Galindo, Liliana (University of Cambridge. Department of Psychiatry)
Carbón Mallol, Xoán (Asociació Benestar i Desenvolupament. Energy Control)
Hart, Carl L.. (Columbia University. New York State Psychiatric Institute and Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons. Division on Substance Abuse)
Pérez Solà, Víctor (Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental)
Colom, Francesc (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Evolutiva i de l'Educació)

Data:	2021
Resum:	During the last few years, the continuous emergence of new psychoactive substances (NPS) has become an important public health challenge. The use of NPS has been rising in two different ways: buying and consuming NPS knowingly and the presence of NPS in traditional drugs as adulterants. The rise of NPS use is increasing the number of different substances in the market to an extent impossible to study with current scientific methodologies. This has caused a remarkable absence of necessary information about newer drug effects on people who use drugs, mental health professionals, and policy makers. Current scientific methodologies have failed to provide enough data in the timeframe when critical decisions must be made, being not only too slow but also too square. Last but not least, they dramatically lack the high resolution of phenomenological details. This study aims to characterize a population of e-psychonauts and the subjective effects of the NPS they used during the study period using a new, internet-based, fast, and inexpensive methodology. This will allow bridging an evidence gap between online surveys, which do not provide substance confirmation, and clinical trials, which are too slow and expensive to keep up with the new substances appearing every week. To cover this purpose, we designed a highly personalized, observational longitudinal study methodology. Participants will be recruited from online communities of people who use NPS, and they will be followed online by means of a continuous objective and qualitative evaluation lasting for at least 1 year. In addition, participants will send samples of the substances they intend to use during that period, so they can be analyzed and matched with the effects they report on the questionnaires. The research protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Hospital del Mar Research Institute on December 11, 2018. Data collection started in August 2019 and was still ongoing when the protocol was submitted (September 2020). The first data collection period of the study ended in October 2020. Data analysis began in November 2020, and it is still ongoing. The authors expect to submit the first results for publication by the end of 2021. A preliminary analysis was conducted when the manuscript was submitted and was reviewed after it was accepted in February 2021. It is possible to conduct an institutional review board-approved study using this new methodology and collect the expected data. However, the meaning and usefulness of these data are still unknown. DERR1-10. 2196/24433.
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Psychotropic ; Psychoactive ; Psychonautic ; Longitudinal ; Observational ; Pharmacology ; Psychopharmacology ; Subjective effects ; Sentinel ; Mental health ; Public health ; Internet ; Ehealth ; Cathinones ; Drugs of abuse ; Psychedelics ; Mobile phone ; Smart phone ; Online recruitment ; Online forums
Publicat a:	JMIR Research Protocols, Vol. 10 (july 2021) , ISSN 1929-0748

Adreça alternativa: https://hdl.handle.net/10803/687918
DOI: 10.2196/24433
PMID: 34255715

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