Drug Treatment Success Rates Drop
Thursday August 24, 2006
The percentage of drug users who enter treatment and actually complete the program dropped significantly from 1997 to 2002, according to a British study of 26,415 drug users over the seven-year period. The proportion of drug users who successfully completed drug addiction treatment decreased from 5.8 percent in 1998 to 3.5 percent in 2002.
The researchers at Liverpool John Moores University also reported that drug users coerced into treatment by the criminal justice system were more likely to drop out of treatment than those referred through other routes. But in a news release, Drug Addiction Treatment Sees Drop in Success Rate, they also reported that the percentage of drug users who came back to start treatment again after dropping out increased from 22.9 percent in 1998 to 48.6 percent in 2002.
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Comments
Interesting. To what extent, if any, do we think these numbers can be extrapolated to the U.S.?
I don’t think it’s possible to extrapolate the British numbers to treatment rate drop-out rates in the U.S. I reported the story mainly because it showed that coerced treatment increased the drop-out rate, rather than improve it.
I wonder if there is a difference between forced treatment and forced 12-step meeting attendance? They say that attending a few meetings can plant the bug so that when a person gets desparate, they know where to go. Forced treatment or forced meetings might simply act in raising people’s bottoms that occur later. You’re going to have the recitivism until it’s the user’s idea to do the treatment…