Drug Abuse Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Drug Abuse, including details on psychology, rehabilitation, consequences, treatment.

Randomized trial of drug abuse treatment-linkage strategies.

Sorensen JL, Masson CL, Delucchi K, Sporer K, Barnett PG, Mitsuishi F, Lin C, Song Y, Chen T, Hall SM

Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, 94110, USA. james@itsa.ucsf.edu

A clinical trial contrasted 2 interventions designed to link opioid-dependent hospital patients to drug abuse treatment. The 126 out-of-treatment participants were randomly assigned to (a) case management, (b) voucher for free methadone maintenance treatment (MMT), (c) case management plus voucher, or (d) usual care. Services were provided for 6 months. MMT enrollment at 3 months was 47% (case management), 89% (voucher), 93% (case management plus voucher), and 11% (usual care); at 6 months enrollment was 48%, 68%, 79%, and 21%, respectively. Case management and vouchers can be valuable in health settings to link substance abusers with medical problems to drug abuse treatment.

Published 5 January 2006 in J Consult Clin Psychol, 73(6): 1026-35.
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