Thursday, September 25, 2003

Chronic Disease Demands Different Treatment, Research Approach
A September 18 feature article at the Join Together site - "Researcher Tom McLellan has long contended that positive addiction-treatment outcomes shouldn't be about abstinence alone, but should factor in a broad range of improvements in areas such as family life, employment, and decreased involvement with law enforcement and the justice system. Addiction treatment, he contends, should be held to the same standards of success used to judge treatment of other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, and asthma, where relapse and noncompliance with therapy and medication are common. But addiction researchers have made the mistake of trying to evaluate treatment as if they were dealing with an acute disorder, not a chronic one, said McLellan, scientific director of the Treatment Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine."  
  

Addiction treatment program now gentler (Canada)
Story in the Toronto Star - "More than 700 welfare recipients are now involved in a controversial addiction treatment program Ontario plans to implement province-wide by 2005. It's a kinder, gentler plan than the one that critics labelled as "coercive" when it was originally announced in 2000. But one fundamental aspect remains in place: the program is mandatory for Ontario Works recipients in selected regions for whom it's deemed addiction poses a 'barrier to employment.'" The story also surveys some of the response to the program since it was announced in 2000 - " '...We are concerned that the portrayal of addictions as the major impediment to employment stigmatizes a population who are struggling to overcome what are a complex and interdependent set of barriers,' reads a letter from the top administration at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health."