Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly最新文献

The final rule amending NQTL (non-quantitative treatment limitation) standards for parity of substance use disorder (SUD) and mental health was issued by the federal government last week. The NQTL standards are key — more than 15 years after the parity law (MHPAEA) was enacted, finally, the backdoor method that insurance companies have been using to deny care has been closed. This backdoor involves non-quantitative — meaning not day or dollar — treatment limitations, such as fail-first (also known as step therapy in which patients are required to fail at one kind of less expensive treatment before payment is authorized for another recommended but more expensive kind).

Motivation has long been considered key to sending substance use disorder (SUD) patients in the direction of recovery. But how do you motivate an adolescent, to whom motivational approaches may feel like a call to battle — or even worse, an excuse for running away? Lauren Sbarbaro, Ph.D., a psychologist licensed in alcohol and drug treatment who trained at Hazelden, shared some insights with attendees at the Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders (CCSAD) in Hyannis, Massachusetts last week.

How does a conference entice 1,200 people to a beautiful location (Cape Cod, Massachusetts) and get them to stay indoors for three days? By providing a full gamut of sessions that you would not get at any standard meeting — and focusing it on substance use disorders. Not behavioral health. Not mental illness. But specifically, on substance use disorders. In addition, the exhibit hall: Not only was there food and coffee, but eager representatives at booths ranging from Overeaters Anonymous, to Hikma Pharmaceuticals and Indivior, to some of the best-known treatment providers in the country. There were also small 16-bed programs for teen boys only on 90 acres. And 1,200 attendees who chose to be at the Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders (CCSAD) (better known as “the Symposium”) instead of the islands. We're already looking forward to next year. Thank you, HMP. (See some of our coverage in the current issue, as well as in coming issues.)

Accurately measuring cognitive impairment in patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD) can make a huge difference for treatment, both in identifying patients at high risk for dropout and tailoring interventions to individuals' abilities. Newly published research suggests, however, that a popular screening tool designed to bypass the need for a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment falls short in detecting cognitive impairment in AUD.

The typical conundrum with cannabis use by adolescents and first episode psychosis — which came first? — was displaced by Steven Batki, M.D. in a plenary session at the Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders (CCSAD) last week. Bakti, who is professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco Weill Institute for Neurosciences, presented his conclusions allowing the audience of some 1,000 to ask questions as he went along.

ADAW attempted to get a nice definition of “safe supply” last month; typically a quiet news time, August is perfect for delving into such projects. Safe supply has apparently been rejected as a phrase because even the harm reduction community recognizes that opioids are not “safe,” but that drugs which do not contain illicit fentanyl, for example, are “safer” than those that do. The entire question arises as a response to the opioid overdose epidemic which shows little sign of abating in the United States.

When this issue goes to press, ADAW will be in Massachusetts covering the Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders (CCSAD), the annual meeting on substance use disorders and their treatment held on Cape Cod. Among the sessions will be one intriguing topic on non-invasive brain stimulation and addiction treatment. There are also many sessions that are helpful to on-the-ground counselors, as well as treatment program administrators, policymakers, and more. We hope to have run across many ADAW readers there. If not, you can read all about the conference in next week's issue.

Results of a new study suggest that the opioid overdose reversal medication naloxone could ultimately prove to have an important role in cardiac arrest care, one possibly not limited to cardiac arrests involving opioids.

The Addiction Health Services Research Conference will be held October 16-18 in San Francisco. For more information, go to https://www.ahsrconference.org/2024/

“Supplement, don't supplant” has long been the watchcry of public interest, and all interest, groups when it comes to funding. Whether for health issues, education or other public-interest issues, new funding is not supposed to take the place of what is already there, with the end result that there is no increase at all. The taxpayer is, in effect, robbed of the good that was supposed to be done by the new funds. Yet that has happened, time and time again, as states, for example, use new funding to supplant existing funding, taking the money and putting it towards another purpose — the general fund, salaries and benefits, or whatever. It takes solid and dedicated reporting to ferret out this kind of problem.