The Use of Psychoactive Substances in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil

  1. César Augusto Trinta Weber
  2. Ingridi Teixeira Monteiro
  3. Julia Medeiros Gehrke
  4. Wagner Silva de Souza

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Abstract

Background

The protocols for mitigating the transmission of Covid-19 seem to be a trigger for the use of psychoactive substances, as an individual’s adaptive response to support this new way of being in the world. Objective: To investigate the use of psychoactive substances in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil. Method: A cross-sectional and prospective observational study, undertaken in a virtual environment. An online survey was developed and employed through Google Forms to collect data. The survey was made available to participants on social networks, Facebook@, Whatsapp@, and Instagram@, linked to the research group, during the period 06/15/2020 to 07/15/2020. 1,145 individuals participated in the research. Results: The average age of the participants was 37 years old. They were mostly female, white, Brazilians, with a higher education level, with occupations in the health field, and had religion. They either maintained their family income or suffered a small income decrease. Moreover, they informed that they were caring for social isolation. The most used substances before and after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic were alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, although the use of these substances decreased (P< 0.001). Approximately 32% of the participants started using psychoactive substances in this period. Among them, most individuals started by their own initiative. Conclusions: For a better understanding of the pattern use of psychoactive substances during the Covid-19 pandemic and the adverse effects on human behavior and mental disorders, careful longitudinal studies must be developed, due to the great interest in the knowledge of adaptive responses when people’s lives are at risk.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.25.20194431: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: The research was approved according to the substantiated opinion number 4.086.949, by the Research Ethics Committee of São Pedro Psychiatric Hospital, Porto Alegre – RS.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The statistical analysis was carried out using the software IBM SPSS statistics v.20.0.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.09.25.20194431v1 on medRxiv