Unmet needs for comprehensive services in outpatient addiction treatment.
Many addiction treatment patients suffer from health and psychosocial problems in addition to substance misuse at the time of their treatment entry. Outpatient treatment programs have attempted to address these problems by providing or facilitating access to comprehensive health and social services. Nevertheless, previous research have suggested high levels of unmet needs for these services in the addiction treatment population. Using data from a large study on community-based outpatient addiction treatment, this article provides additional information on levels of unmet service needs and the relationship between need and receipt of services during treatment. Our results suggest extremely high levels of unmet needs for a wide variety of health and psychosocial services. Specifically, the data suggest that unmet service needs may be far more prevalent than previous estimates and that addiction treatment populations in rural areas may be particularly disadvantaged.
Pringle
Janice L
JL
Department of Pharmacy and Therapeutics, University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, 449 Falk Clinic, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. jlp127@pitt.edu
Emptage
Nicholas P
NP
Hubbard
Robert L
RL
D000554:Ambulatory Care Facilities / Q000592:standards*; D002648:Child; D002654:Child Care; D003625:Data Collection; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D004493:Education; D005196:Family Therapy; D006801:Humans; D010361:Patients; D010414:Pennsylvania; D012424:Rural Population; D012947:Social Work; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D014186:Transportation; D014505:Urban Population