Home > Drug treatment matrix cell A3: Interventions - medical treatment.

Drug and Alcohol Findings. (2018) Drug treatment matrix cell A3: Interventions - medical treatment. Drug and Alcohol Findings Drug Treatment Matrix,

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The Drug treatment matrix is concerned with the treatment of problems related to the use of illegal drugs by adults (another deals with alcohol-related problems). It maps the treatment universe and for each sub-territory (a cell) lists the most important UK-relevant research and guidance. Across the top columns move from specific interventions through how their impacts are affected by staff, the management of the service, and the nature of the organisation, to the impact of local area treatment systems. Down the rows are the major intervention types implemented at these levels.

What is cell A3 about?

About the treatment of dependence on illegal drugs in a medical context and/or involving medical care, typically by GPs or at drug treatment or psychiatric clinics in hospitals. Clinical staff are responsible for medications, so the centrality of these to an intervention distinguishes it most clearly as medical. Medications may be intended to help patients withdraw from drugs more comfortably and with a greater chance of completing the process, to sustain longer term abstinence (eg, the opiate-blocking drug naltrexone), or to substitute a safer, legal and medically controlled drug of the same kind the patient is dependent on, but more conducive to social stabilisation, such as methadone for dependent heroin users.

However, medications are never all there is to medical care. Ideally, they promote a stable space free of drug effects, and/or of the need to chase illicit supplies, during which patients can find other ways to cope, and construct lives incompatible with a return to dependent use of illicit drugs. Medication-based treatments also entail potentially therapeutic interactions with clinical and other staff. Arrangements or programmes to help ensure patients take the medications may themselves be therapeutic and enlist family and other associates in the patient’s care. Medical treatment for drug dependence may consist entirely of advice and psychosocial support from clinical staff......

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