Impact of a trauma intervention on reducing dropout from substance use disorder treatment.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the effectiveness (in terms of retention) of an intervention aimed at treating the consequences of lifetime physical and/or sexual abuse among patients who are also seeking substance use disorder treatment (SUD-T) in a clinical center.

METHOD

A parallel, randomized, controlled clinical trial using an experimental design (with 1 treatment group and 1 control group) with repeated measures (pretreatment, posttreatment and six-month follow-up) was carried out. The sample consisted of 57 patients in SUD-T who had experienced lifetime physical and/or sexual abuse. All patients received a cognitive-behavioral SUD-T. In addition, the treatment group ( = 29) received physical and/or sexual abuse treatment (PSA-T).

RESULTS

The treatment group presented a lower SUD-T dropout rate (37.9%; n = 11) than the control group (50.0%; n = 14), but this difference was not statistically significant (χ² = .8; = .359; φ = .122). The main variable related to SUD-T success (therapeutic discharge after completing the 40 outpatient sessions or 12 inpatients months and maintained abstinence) was the completion of PSA-T.

CONCLUSIONS

The completion of this trauma-centred treatment improved the retention rate of SUD-T in patients with histories of physical and/or sexual abuse. This is a promising result because of the high SUD-T dropout rate shown by patients with victimization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).