Journal of Dual Diagnosis: Highlights from 2021

The year 2021 will be remembered for, among other events, the prolonged coronavirus outbreak due to the emergence of the Delta and Omicron variants. The pandemic has brought death and isolation, as well as unemployment and other economic consequences. It has also had a negative effect on research.

This difficult year has, however, seen growth in the Journal of Dual Diagnosis. The journal’s 2020 impact factor increased to 1.613. The 5-year impact factor continues to increase and once again reached a new high, as did the article influence score, immediacy index, Eigenfactor score and total citations. The journal is also international in reach with papers from 24 countries published in the journal over the past three years.

Dr. Alan Green, the Journal of Dual Diagnosis’ editor for many years, passed away in late 2019 after a long illness. His extraordinary contributions both to the Journal of Dual Diagnosis and to the dual diagnosis field were remembered in several editorials in Issue 2 (Brown, 2021; Brunette, 2021; Buckley, 2021; Henricks et al., 2021).

Several papers during 2021 focused on trauma and substance use. Lebeaut et al. examined a group of firefighters with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder, PTSD only, alcohol use disorder only and only trauma exposure. They observed that firefighters with PTSD only or PTSD with alcohol use disorder demonstrated elevated anxiety sensitivity and emotional regulation tolerance, and reduced distress tolerance and mindfulness compared to other groups (Lebeaut et al., 2021). Blakey et al. examined drinking to cope in a large sample of men with and without military experience. They observed that drinking to cope was more common in those with military experience even after controlling for PTSD diagnosis (Blakey et al., 2021). McGee-Vincent et al. discuss the development of mobile mental health apps from the National Center for PTSD (McGee-Vincent et al., 2021).

The paper discussed above highlights the potential for technology to change dual diagnosis treatment. Another paper on this topic from the past year was by Sugarman et al. The authors observed that few patients were currently using apps and other web-based technology. However, they determined that patients expressed interest in this technology and identified areas in which this technology might be useful for young women (Sugarman et al., 2021).

Systematic reviews summarize findings from a variety of studies allowing the readers to better evaluate available evidence (Gopalakrishnan & Ganeshkumar, 2013). The Journal of Dual Diagnosis published three such papers in 2021. Hawes et al. reviewed the literature on psychosocial interventions for smoking cessation on people with major psychiatric illnesses and found that most studies suggest these types of interventions increase abstinence (Hawes et al., 2021). Moraleda-Barreno et al. reviewed the literature on executive functioning in people with substance use and personality disorders. They reported generally negative or ambiguous findings suggesting that the presence of the personality disorder may not influence cognition in people who use substances (Moraleda-Barreno et al., 2021). Oh et al. conducted a review and meta-analysis on personality traits in people with psychosis and substance use disorders. They observed externalizing and impulsive personality traits in dual diagnosis population (Oh et al., 2021).

The opioid epidemic has been a major public health concerns for some years. Two papers in the past year focused on opioid use. Clark et al. reviewed the available literature on the relationship between panic disorder and opioid use disorder (Clark et al., 2021). Peltier et al. used a large VA dataset to explore sex differences in opioid use disorders. A variety of sex differences were found including greater psychiatric comorbidity in women and greater medical comorbidity in men. The findings highlight the need for identifying and addresses comorbidities and multimorbidites in people with opioid use disorder (Peltier et al., 2021).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).