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Effectiveness Bank bulletin 25 June 2015
According to one of its own criteria, a UK government-led pilot programme which pays treatment services for good outcomes seems to have meant fewer good outcomes. One way to tackle the common co-occurrence of serious depression and serious drinking. How to better engage expectant mothers in treatment, and why Sydney’s ambulance service has reasons to be grateful to the city’s safer injecting centre.

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Hot topics – important, controversial, dividing opinion over facts or interpretation.
Current hot topics: Selection for the current two-month period
Hot topics archive: Complete set of current and past hot topics

Paying services for success leads to fewer successful treatments
A flagship government drug treatment initiative appears to have backfired in England, where pilot payment-by-results areas have registered fewer successful treatment completions and more prospective patients declining treatment.
Also see hot topic on payment-by-results in the UK and treatment commissioning in general.

UPDATED Combine medications for depressed dependent drinkers
First evidence that combining sertraline for depression with naltrexone for drinking is more effective than either medication alone when dependent drinking is complicated by clinical depression.

Improved engagement programme for family drug court
US researchers may have found a better way to support mothers at risk of losing custody of their children so they engage in and benefit from substance use treatment and meet family court requirements, meaning more children can safely stay with their parents.
Also see this evaluation of the first family drug and alcohol court in Britain.

Injecting centre reduced overdose ambulance call-outs
Evidence that the supervised injecting centre which opened in 2001 in Sydney’s ‘red light’ district resulted in fewer opioid overdoses requiring an ambulance, relieving this source of pressure on the emergency service.
Also see this report on the same centre.


Sent by the Drug and Alcohol Findings Effectiveness Bank to alert you to site updates and UK-relevant evaluations of drug/alcohol interventions. Findings is supported by Alcohol Research UK and the Society for the Study of Addiction and advised by the National Addiction Centre and the Federation of Drug and Alcohol Professionals.