Short reportSocial disadvantage and past treatment among clients entering public alcohol and drug services in two Australian states
Section snippets
Method
The study involved interviews with 781 clients at entry to AOD treatment, in Victoria or Western Australia (January 2012 to January 2013). Participants were recruited from publically funded AOD services and ethics approval was obtained from Research Ethics Committees at Eastern Health (E17/1112), Monash University (201200020), and Curtin (HR11/2012) University. Residential forms of treatment were over sampled and weightings based on treatment at entry were applied so that results would be more
Results
More than half the sample was male (59.6%) and the median age was 36.5 years. Just below half (49.3%) had completed secondary school, an apprenticeship, and/or a tertiary qualification. They reported the following PDOCs: 48.1% alcohol, 19.9% amphetamine-type stimulants (meth/amphetamine 17%), 17.8% cannabis, 15.0% opioids, and 3.2% ‘other’. Almost all participants had SDS scores of 3 or more, indicative of dependence (97.6%) and a large majority (84.0%) had scores of 7 or more, indicative of
Discussion
For the first time with an Australian sample, participants’ experience of social disadvantage has been detailed and related to their rates of previous AOD treatment in the past 12 months. The key finding from our work is that income status predicted past year AOD treatment experience independently of other factors and (with the exception of opioids) irrespective of PDOC. The hardship experienced by participants was profound, with high rates of unemployment, sickness and disability along with
Conflict of interest statement
We wish to confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest associated with this publication and there has been no significant financial support for this work that could have influenced its outcome.
Acknowledgements
This project was funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health. Sincere thanks to the study participants and recruitment services for their invaluable contribution. We appreciate the thoughtful comments from two anonymous reviewers.
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Present address: Australian Catholic University, Melbourne 3000, Australia.