Contextualising psychological distress among regular ecstasy users: The importance of sociodemographic factors and patterns of drug use

Abstract

Introduction and Aims: Considerable concern has been raised about associations between ecstasy use and mental health. Studies of ecstasy users typically investigate varying levels of lifetime use of ecstasy, and often fail to account for other drug use and sociodemographic characteristics of participants, which may explain mixed findings. The current study aimed to examine the relationship between patterns of recent (last six months) ecstasy use and psychological distress among current, regular ecstasy users, controlling for sociodemographic risk factors and patterns of other drug use. Design and Methods: Data were collected from regular ecstasy users (n = 752) recruited from each capital ci..