Impact of a trauma intervention on reducing dropout from substance use disorder treatment

To evaluate the effectiveness (in terms of retention) of an intervention aimed at treating the consequences of lifetime physical and/or sexual abuse among patients who are also seeking substance use disorder treatment (SUD-T) in a clinical center.

A parallel, randomized, controlled clinical trial using an experimental design (with 1 treatment group and 1 control group) with repeated measures (pretreatment, posttreatment and six-month follow-up) was carried out. The sample consisted of 57 patients in SUD-T who had experienced lifetime physical and/or sexual abuse. All patients received a cognitive-behavioral SUD-T. In addition, the treatment group (n = 29) received physical and/or sexual abuse treatment (PSA-T).

The treatment group presented a lower SUD-T dropout rate (37.9%; n = 11) than the control group (50.0%; n = 14), but this difference was not statistically significant (χ² = .8; p = .359; φ = .122). The main variable related to SUD-T success (therapeutic discharge after completing the 40 outpatient sessions or 12 inpatients months and maintained abstinence) was the completion of PSA-T.

The completion of this trauma-centred treatment improved the retention rate of SUD-T in patients with histories of physical and/or sexual abuse. This is a promising result because of the high SUD-T dropout rate shown by patients with victimization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).