[Descriptive studies of the use of the Addiction Severity Index in France]

The Addiction Severity Index (ASI) is an instrument that provides, in a 45-minutes semi-structured interview, a multidimensional assessment of substance abuse patients. It was designed in 1980 by A.T. McLellan et al., from Philadelphia PA, in North-America and introduced in France by our group in 1990. Over the past five years we have used it in different substance abuse populations including alcohol users. The goal of this paper is to review the adaptation procedure into French context and to present ASI data from different substance abuse sub-groups: opioïd dependent subjects seeking treatment and former heroïn addicted patients in maintenance treatment. After description of the ASI, presentation of the training procedure for its optimized use and methodological issues, we present for each opiate dependent group acceptability data, results of some of the ASI's 240 items and the severity scores. The Addiction Severity Index provides assessment of problem severity in seven functional areas in which substance abusers are commonly impaired and unable assessment of need for treatment. Objective and subjective patient data are collected in the following seven areas: medical, employment/ support, alcohol, drug use, legal, family/social relationship, and psychiatric. The ASI is both broad in the extent of its evaluation and yet easy to use for appropriately trained interviewers. Use of the ASI over the past five years allows us to underline the following characteristics: in the clinical setting the ASI unable a common descriptive analysis for need and adaptation for treatment of different patients populations; in the research setting the ASI is particularly suited for epidemiological studies of addiction and description, analysis or evaluation research.