Improved Quality of Life Following Addiction Treatment Is Associated with Reductions in Substance Use
by
Victoria Manning 1,2,*, Joshua B. B. Garfield 1,2
, Tina Lam 1, Steve Allsop 3, Lynda Berends 4,5, David Best 6, Penny Buykx 7, Robin Room 8,9 and Dan I. Lubman 1,2
Victoria Manning 1,2,*, Joshua B. B. Garfield 1,2, Tina Lam 1, Steve Allsop 3, Lynda Berends 4,5, David Best 6, Penny Buykx 7, Robin Room 8,9 and Dan I. Lubman 1,2
1
Monash Addiction Research Centre, Eastern Health Clinical School, Monash University, 110 Church Street, Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia
2
Turning Point, Eastern Health, 110 Church Street, Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia
3
National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University, 2 Building 609, Curtin University, 7 Parker Place, Bentley 6102, Australia
4
TRACE Research, 1/209 Nicholson St, Footscray, Victoria 3011, Australia
5
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
6
Department of Law, Criminology, and Community Justice, Sheffield Hallam University, Howard St, Sheffield S1 1WB, UK
7
School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle, University Drive, Callaghan 2308, Australia
8
Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3086 Australia
9
Centre for Social Research on Alcohol & Drugs, Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University, SE - 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
J. Clin. Med. 2019, 8(9), 1407; https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm8091407
Received: 13 August 2019 / Revised: 3 September 2019 / Accepted: 5 September 2019 / Published: 6 September 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Understanding and Treating Addictive Behaviors: From Etiology to Clinical Interventions)
People seeking treatment for substance use disorders (SUD) ultimately aspire to improve their quality of life (QOL) through reducing or ceasing their substance use, however the association between these treatment outcomes has received scant research attention. In a prospective, multi-site treatment outcome study (‘Patient Pathways’), we recruited 796 clients within one month of intake from 21 publicly funded addiction treatment services in two Australian states, 555 (70%) of whom were followed-up 12 months later. We measured QOL at baseline and follow-up using the WHOQOL-BREF (physical, psychological, social and environmental domains) and determined rates of “SUD treatment success” (past-month abstinence or a statistically reliable reduction in substance use) at follow-up. Mixed effects linear regression analyses indicated that people who achieved SUD treatment success also achieved significantly greater improvements in QOL, relative to treatment non-responders (all four domains p < 0.001). Paired t-tests indicated that non-responders significantly improved their social (p = 0.007) and environmental (p = 0.033) QOL; however, their psychological (p = 0.088) and physical (p = 0.841) QOL did not significantly improve. The findings indicate that following treatment, QOL improved in at least some domains, but that reduced substance use was associated with both stronger and broader improvements in QOL. Addressing physical and psychological co-morbidities during treatment may facilitate reductions in substance use.
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Keywords:
quality of life; substance use treatment; substance use disorder; reduced substance use; abstinence; treatment outcome; addiction; alcohol and drugs
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Manning, V.; Garfield, J.B.B.; Lam, T.; Allsop, S.; Berends, L.; Best, D.; Buykx, P.; Room, R.; Lubman, D.I. Improved Quality of Life Following Addiction Treatment Is Associated with Reductions in Substance Use. J. Clin. Med. 2019, 8, 1407.
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