Validation may be best way to support stressed out friends and family
Mar 27, 2020
In uncertain times, supporting your friends and family can help them make it through. But your comforting words can have different effects based on how you phrase them, according to new Penn State research. The researchers studied how people responded to a variety of different messages offering…
For many, friends and family, not doctors, serve as a gateway to opioid misuse
Jun 4, 2019
In a common narrative of the path to opioid misuse, people become addicted to painkillers after a doctor prescribed them pills to treat an injury and then, later, switch to harder drugs, such as heroin. However, nonmedical opioid users were more likely to say they began abusing opioids after…
Study: Friends, family are most common gateway to addiction, not doctors
May 15, 2019
By Rich Lord, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The often-told story of the prescription for an opioid that launches the patient down the road to ruin is not the typical tale of heroin addiction, according to a new report by researchers from Penn State and other universities. More common, according to the…
How winning friends may influence adolescent behaviors
Sep 20, 2018
Adolescents may get by with a little help from their friends, but, according to Penn State researchers, friend selection and friend influence, as well as gender, may all play a role in establishing friendships that can help, or possibly hurt, them. In a study of adolescent friendship networks, the…