Podcast: Which talking therapies work for people who use drugs and also have alcohol problems?

The Cochrane Drugs and Alcohol Group studies interventions to help people who have problems with alcohol or who use illicit drugs. In December 2018, these came together in an updated review on psychosocial interventions for people who use drugs and also have alcohol problems. Jan Klimas, from the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use in Vancouver, Canada tells us about the latest evidence in this podcast.For people generally, drinking alcohol above the low ‐risk drinking limits can lead to serious alcohol related problems or disorders. But it’s even worse for those who also have problems with other drugs, leading to a large impact on their physical and mental health.One class of psychosocial interventions, called talking therapies, aim to help people identify an alcohol problem and then boost their motivation to do something about it. Talking therapies can be given by trained doctors, nurses, counsellors, psychologists, etc. They may help reduce alcohol use and we wanted to find out if they can help people who also have problems with other drugs, such as opioids and stimulants. Our main aim was to see whether these therapies reduce drinking in adults who use illicit drugs and whether one type of therapy is more effective than another.We found seven randomised trials that examined five talking therapies among 825 people with drug problems. Overall, we found that the therapies led to little or no differences for the outcomes assessed in the trials, which included abstine...
Source: Cochrane News and Events - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: news