At treatment entry patients generally experienced severely reduced QoL. At 6 months follow-up a moderate improvement of QoL was observed for the group as a whole, but abstinence towards all drugs of abuse the 30 days prior to follow-up interview predicted improvements in perceived QoL.
Relative social isolation and a higher psychiatric symptom burden were factors associated with negative development in QoL at follow-up. It is considered important to communicate to patients in detoxification treatment that sustained abstinence is associated with improvements in QoL.
Similarly it is clinically important that treatment providers not only focus on drug use patterns during treatment, but also invest in the patients’ social, psychological and somatic health.
Interest and repeated measurements of QoL during the course of treatment is a means of setting the patients’ needs in focus and thereby to become a relevant partner in the patients’ paths towards recovery.
Read the full-length paper here:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11136-016-1272-z