Efficacy of Addiction Treatment in a Correctional Setting for Female Offenders as Measured by the Addiction Severity Index
Problem. This study was designed to determine to what extent improvement following treatment for addiction was evident, and if treatment seemed causative in that outcome, for incarcerated female addicts. This study also explored the question of which treatment modality seemed most effective-- an education-only group, a comprehensive long-term treatment group, or a waiting-list control group. -- Method. The Addiction Severity Index (ASI) furnished scores on seven psychosocial areas for subjects. Hypotheses were tested with paired t tests. The means of the pre- and post-tests for the three groups were compared, as well as between group mean scores. Second, a correlation analysis was performed to determine the importance of subject characteristics hypothesized to predict treatment outcomes. Third, questions of validity of subjective versus objective data were addressed by correlation analysis, comparing the subject's self-reported severity of problems with the researcher's rating. Results. In this study, there were statistically significant differences in treatment outcome on several psychosocial score areas in each group, and there was a difference between both treatment groups and the control group. These results suggest that education is better than nothing, and that a comprehensive treatment approach is more effective than an education-only treatment approach. In both pre- and post-test scores, for the Treatment group positive correlations were observed on all measures except Employment Status. There were : Medical Status, Alcohol Use Status, Drug Use Status, Legal Status, Family/Social Status, and Psychological Status. This shows that a positive change was experienced through treatment with subjects in many psychosocial areas. A correlation analysis was performed to attempt to isolate subject characteristics that might predict treatment outcomes. The results showed that no subject characteristic, except education and income levels, was predictive of outcome. The concurrent and discriminant validity of self-report, as measured by the ASI, was questionable as represented by relatively low and variable correlations. Addicts scored better in many areas of psychosocial functioning following treatment than they did before treatment, suggesting a positive response to treatment. Conclusions. The results of this study demonstrated that female incarcerated addicts responded to comprehensive Treatment. The data also indicated that the Education and the waiting-list Control group did not achieve significant improvement in the variables measured. The Education and Treatment groups did not reflect a pre-test difference in the majority of baseline variables measured. Addict self-report correlated positively with researcher rating, though this was variable and the correlations were low. It was not possible to establish long-term follow-up rates for these subjects.
Mental and Social Health, Substance Abuse and Addiction
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