Hot topic search results

Effectiveness bank home page. Opens new window Hot topic search results

You have found 14 entries after clicking the GO button or a search link in a hot topic. Starting with analyses of the most recently published documents, the list shows in orange the type of entry, year the original document was published (or if one of our own documents, the year last updated), and the type of file you will download when you click on the title. In blue is the document’s title followed by a brief description.

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HOT TOPIC 2018 HTM file
Cycle of Change: change promoter or benevolent fiction?

One of our hot topics – essays on important issues which sometimes generate heated debate over the facts or their interpretation. Its simplicity is beguiling, but does the ubiquitous cycle of change model simply describe the change process, or help predict and accelerate it?

MATRIX CELL 2017 HTM file
Drug Treatment Matrix cell A2: Interventions; Generic and cross-cutting issues

Seminal and key studies on features common to psychosocial therapy/support and medical treatment. Investigates where treatment is aiming to get to in the form of ‘recovery’, where it starts from as depicted in the brain-disease model of addiction, and the politics of the two most important British drug treatment studies.

MATRIX CELL 2017 HTM file
Drug Treatment Matrix cell C2: Management/supervision; Generic and cross-cutting issues

Key studies on the role of management and supervision across psychosocial and medical treatments of problem drug use. Highlights that “Manners Matter”, asks, “Is there anything more instructive than being the patient?”, explores the role of patient choice and preferences in treatment planning, and queries the ubiquitous stages of change model. See the rest of row 2 of the matrix for more on features common to psychosocial and medical treatments.

HOT TOPIC 2016 HTM file
What is addiction treatment for?

‘Hot topics’ offer background and analysis on important issues which sometimes generate heated debate. The answers to the title question might seem obvious, but who drug addiction treatment is for and what it should aim to achieve are contested territory.

REVIEW 2013 HTM file
Quitting drugs: quantitative and qualitative features

Innovative re-analysis of US national surveys reveals that no matter how long ago someone became dependent on an illegal drug or alcohol, their chances of achieving remission remain the same. The findings challenge models which assume that progressive neural, lifestyle or psychological changes increasingly lock someone in to addiction.

REVIEW 2012 HTM file
The meanings of recovery from addiction: evolution and promises

What is 'recovery' and what does it mean for the roles of treatment and of doctors? This analysis based on the last ten years' writings on the subject draws a parallel with mental health, where recovery in terms of a meaningful and self-directed life is reserved for persisting severe illness resistant to 'cure' via treatment.

REVIEW 2012 HTM file
Recovery/remission from substance use disorders: an analysis of reported outcomes in 415 scientific reports, 1868–2011

Positive message of this compendious synthesis of hundreds of studies is that "Recovery is not an aberration achieved by a small and morally enlightened minority of addicted people. If there is a natural developmental momentum within the course of [these] problems, it is toward remission and recovery."

STUDY 2011 HTM file
Probability and predictors of remission from life-time nicotine, alcohol, cannabis or cocaine dependence: results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions

The largest recent US national survey of drink and drug problems shows that outside the addiction treatment clinic, remission is the norm and recovery common. After 14 years half the people at some time dependent on alcohol were in remission, a milestone reached for cannabis after six years, and for cocaine after just five.

REVIEW 2010 HTM file
Systematic review of prospective studies investigating 'remission' from amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine or opioid dependence

Review synthesises evidence on how many people recover each year (with or without treatment) from their dependence on stimulants, heroin-type drugs or cannabis, providing a baseline against which to assess improvement efforts.

STUDY 2010 HTM file
Vietnam veterans three years after Vietnam: how our study changed our view of heroin

Reprint of a 1977 presentation of one of the most influential studies of heroin addiction ever conducted, which called in to question its supposed addictive qualities, the need for prolonged treatment and abstinence to overcome addiction, and whether heroin use inevitably causes major social problems.


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