Over a 6-year period, the senior author (JRA) performed 91 ulnar collateral ligament reconstructions (N = 78) or repairs (N = 13). All patients were male and between the ages of 15 and 39 years (average, 21.6). Thirty-seven patients (41%) were professional baseball players, 41 (45%) were collegiate baseball players, and 7 (7.7%) were high school or recreational players. Subcutaneous ulnar nerve transposition with stabilization of the nerve with fascial slings of the flexor pronator mass was performed in all patients, and additional procedures were performed in 27 patients (29.7%), including 22 excisions of posteromedial olecranon osteophytes. Average follow-up was 35.4 months. Ten patients had preoperative ulnar nerve symptoms, nine of whom had complete resolution of symptoms after surgery. Complications occurred in eight patients. The average time from surgery to initiation of the interval throwing program was 3.4 months, and the average time to return to competitive throwing was 9.8 months. Sixty-seven patients (74%) were available for follow-up; of these, 53 (79%) had returned to their previous levels of competition or to a higher level. Reconstruction of the ulnar collateral ligament, with transposition and stabilization of the ulnar nerve and appropriate rehabilitation, was found to be effective in correcting medial instability of the elbow and allowed most athletes to return to previous levels of play in less than 1 year.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is the most commonly used program for substance abuse recovery and one of the few models to demonstrate positive abstinence outcomes. Although little is known regarding the underlying mechanisms that make this program effective, one frequently cited aspect is social support. In order to gain insight into the processes at work in AA, this paper reviewed 24 papers examining the relationship between AA and social network variables. Various types of social support were included in the review such as structural support, functional support, general support, alcohol-specific support, and recovery helping. Overall, this review found that AA involvement is related to a variety of positive qualitative and quantitative changes in social support networks. Although AA had the greatest impact on friend networks, it had less influence on networks consisting of family members or others. In addition, support from others in AA was found to be of great value to recovery, and individuals with harmful social networks supportive of drinking actually benefited the most from AA involvement. Furthermore, social support variables consistently mediated AA's impact on abstinence, suggesting that social support is a mechanism in the effectiveness of AA in promoting a sober lifestyle. Recommendations are made for future research and clinical practice.

Social support may be considered from several different dimensions.

Results of both studies suggest that the IP fits a multi-component structure. It is recommended that Drinking Behaviours of Network Members be examined for predictive validity and that General Social Support be removed from the scale or have additional items added.

Hope is commonly divided into two constructs: agency, defined as goal-directed energy, and pathways, defined as the ability to create paths to a goal. To date, only two studies have examined the utility of hope in substance abuse recovery, and the present investigation buildings on this small literature by assessing hope beliefs within a larger and more diverse sample of adults in recovery. This study examined how two hope constructs of agency and pathways related to substance use abstinence among 90 new residents of communal-living recovery homes (i.e., Oxford Houses) who completed two waves of data assessment. Results indicated that agency scores significantly predicted alcohol use at Wave 1 but pathway scores failed to predict drug or alcohol use at this time point. Additionally, agency and pathway scores predicted drug (but not alcohol use) at an 8-month follow-up assessment. These findings indicated that participants' hope may be linked to substance use at later stages of recovery. In addition, these results suggested a stronger relationship between hope and drug as opposed to alcohol use at this time point. Implications for substance abuse recovery are discussed. Keywordshope; substance abuse recovery; Oxford HouseThe concept of hope became popular with psychologists in the in the late-20th century (Lopez, Snyder, & Pedrotti, 2003). Since then, hope has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. To start out with, hope can be viewed as a dispositional or a state construct. Dispositional measures of hope view hope as a long-term trait, whereas state measures of hope conceptualize hope as a short-term, temporary construct. Although state and trait measures may differ conceptually, an individual's score on measures of dispositional and state hope do not vary greatly, as state hope typically fluctuates within a limited range around a person's level of dispositional hope (Snyder et al., 1996).In addition, most theories of hope fall into two categories: emotion-based or cognition-based (Snyder, Harris, Anderson, Holleran, Irving, & Sigmon, 1991). Of the few emotion-based hope theories that exist, most of these include some sort of cognitive element (Lopez et al., 2003). Beginning with Mowrer (1960), hope was an emotional form of secondary reinforcement. More recently, Averill, Catlin, and Chon (1990) described hope as an emotion governed by cognition. In their model, individuals were most likely to experience hope when they possessed goals that were realistically within their reach, personally important to them, and socially and morally acceptable (Averill et al.).Correspondence should be sent to Joe Ferrari, Ph.D., at the Department of Psychology, 2219 North Kenmore Avenue, Chicago IL, 60614; jferrari@depaul.edu. Portions of this paper were based on a Masters Thesis by the first author under the direction of the second author. In contrast to the emotion-based models, the models based on cognition receive much more attention by researchers (Lopez et al., 2003 Currently, the most accepted model of hope con...