Background & Objective: Dependence on substance or addiction is a psychological disturbance. This is referred to as substance abuse in psychological classifications and is the second most common psychological disturbance. On the other hand depression is an instance of disturbance, which is observed among the victims of substance abuse. This study set out to evaluate the effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT) of depression among patients with substance abuse.

 Methods: Using experimental method, 28 men and women (23-35 years, normal IQ) with substance abuse were randomly selected according to DSMIV criteria. These subjects had been under anti-addiction medication for two years, without adequate control, and were divided into two groups. The two groups received the following treatments for 6 weeks: 1- Cognitive Behavior Therapy. 2- No specific psychological treatment (control group). Two instruments were used to collect data namely Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) to evaluate depression and demographic forms to record the information.

 Results: The data were analyzed using repeated measurements including a pretest and two posttests. In pretest, according to scores of both groups from Beck test, there was a severe depression among the subjects. However in the second and third posttests these scores fell significantly. The intra-group and inter-group tests showed that these reduction in scores was related to the intra-group differences.

 Conclusions: CBT has had an important role in treatment of depression among patients with substance abuse. Psychological intervention was able to help them change their cognition by decreasing depression and enable them to have a more positive belief in controlling themselves against dependency. It seems that taking psychologically team-approach (both theoretically and practically) about control strategies and treatment of depression in patients with substance abuse can deeply improve their life style as well as their individual and social relations.

  Background and objectives: Establishing centers to stop addiction in our country is one of the measures taken to confront this problem. Unfortunately, it has been shown that about 80% of the addicted people who refer to these centers relapse. The present study set out to investigate the possible causes of this problem.

  Methods: This is a case control study in which a questionnaire was used to collect the required data. The subjects were all addicted people who referred to Shahid Mellat Doust and Shahid Family treatment centers in 2000. The criterions for entering the study in case group were the last record of the addicted person ’ s abandonment in Tehran ’ s welfare center ( based on the patients ’ records) and using narcotics at the present time. The control group subjects, on the other hand, had abandoned using narcotics at least four months before and had never used any substance so far.

  Results: The mean age for case group was 35.99 and that of the control group was 35.09. Regarding the age distribution 98.59% of the case group and 100% of the control group were men. 88.7% of the case group and 97.2% of the control group were urban residents. Considering the job, 40.8% of the case group and 19.4% of the control group were unemployed. 52.1% of the case group and 61.6% of control group were living with their spouses. Opium was the most commoly used narcotics in both groups. In studying the relationship between the variables under study through logistic regression the job was not a main factor in the relapse. The duration of time being away from addiction had a deductive effect on the relapse, and this effect was statistically meaningful (p=0.001). Adding one month ’ s time to the period of being clear (not using the narcotics) caused 98% deduction in returning to narcotics.

  Conclusion: Because 80% of the patients who referred to the related centers began using narcotics again during the first 6 months after abandoning, it is necessary to improve the preventive measures to help the patients pass this critical period.

  Serious vascular complications of IV drug abuse are being encountered with increasing frequency. These patients often present with cellulitis, abscess and endocarditic. Due to having viral infections these people can be a hazard to health care workers. Medical intervention is usually conducted after the emergence of one of the dreadful complications of IV drug abuse. The subject is a 40-year old male prisoner who referred to Emergency Department with 24 hours history of chill and fever, intermittent bleeding from a painful ulcerated lump in right groin along with hypotension and severe edema of right lower extremity necessitating packing and initial resuscitative measures. It was clinically diagnosed as ruptured infected pseudo aneurysm and urgent exploration was undertaken. Excision of common femoral artery was conducted by interpositioning of saphenous graft between external iliac and superficial femoral artery along with ligation of deep femoral artery drainage of abscess and debridment of necrotic tissue. The patient recovered with limb salvage except seroma on original site of vein graft.

 Background & Objectives: Narcotic abuse is one of the main problems in the world today, and individuals ’ view towards it is important for managers and social problem analysts.Regarding the threats and harms of the prevalence of narcotics in society, this research was done to determine the rate of tendency to narcotics among people over ten years old in Ardabil province.

 Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional research. A two-section questionnaire was used to collect the data. 600 men and women over ten years of age were chosen through systematic cluster sampling and the required information was gathered by referring to their houses and interviewing them. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS software using descriptive and analytical statistics.

 Results: 3.5% of the samples had positive family history of using narcotics. 18% were smokers. 84.7% believed that one can use narcotics everywhere. 30% claimed that using narcotics reduces one ’ s physical discomfort, and 30.2% expressed that one can give up the narcotics whenever necessary. On the whole the tendency towards addiction among the subjects was 53.57%. This tendency was higher in rural areas compared to the cities (56.72% versus 49.81%). This difference was statistically significant (p<0.001). Illiterate people had the most tendency rate towards addiction (55.61%). There was a statistically significant relationship between tendency towards addiction and positive family history (p< 0.05). The highest tendency rate (54.33%) was seen in 11- 20 age group.

 Conclusion: the results showed that the consequent dangers of addiction are not known for people and that the great tendency for narcotics shows the need to inform the society in order to prevent the addiction.