Anxiety and Suicidal Ideation Predict Successful Completion of Substance Abuse Treatment in a Criminal Justice Sample

Abstract

The goal of this study was to identify predictors of successful substance abuse treatment in an out-patient clinic for individuals being monitored under community corrections supervision. Of the 615 participants, 117 (19%) successfully completed treatment. The results of a multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that successful treatment was associated with several baseline characteristics including: older age, White race, having greater than a high school education, lower level of care, meeting criteria for an anxiety disorder, reporting suicidal ideation, and not having a history of opioid use. The value of self-report of problems and its influence on treatment in the culture of the criminal justice population is discussed in this article.

The long-term outcome of patients with heroin use disorder/dual disorder (chronic psychosis) after admission to enhanced methadone maintenance

“…It is not easy to correlate low educational level with poor outcome. It is known that, in SUD patients, successful treatment was associated with several baseline characteristics including older age, white race, having more than a high school education, lower level of care and not having a history of opioid use [ 32 ]. It is also true that, at first sight, control patients seem to be a more seriously ill control group.…”

Gaging the impact of multiple substance use on community corrections involvement

“…However, established findings on substance use do not always generalize to criminal justice samples. For example, several studies examining community corrections samples have indicated that more severe substance use (i.e., use of more addictive and damaging substances) may not be associated with more severe outcomes (Clark et al, 2014; Listwan et al, 2009; Shaffer et al, 2011). The current study largely supported this pattern.…”

“…Research has demonstrated worse outcomes for harder substances in some cases (Clark et al, 2013) while in others no differences have been found. For example, recidivism rates in community corrections samples have shown no differences for crack cocaine use when compared to alcohol and marijuana use (Clark, Hendricks, Brown, & Cropsey, 2014; Shaffer, Hartman, Listwan, Howell, & Latessa, 2011), nor were differences found for methamphetamine users (crystal meth) when compared to non-meth users (72% of the comparison group was made up of alcohol and marijuana users; Listwan, Shaffer, & Hartman, 2009). Several possible explanations exist to explain this discrepancy.…”

Family Dysfunction and Suicide Risk in a Community Corrections Sample

“…Family plays a dominate role in their lives and because of this, members of the criminal justice system may have less resilience to recover from family conflict as opposed to other forms of setback. Mental illness and other forms of distress can be difficult to assess in this population (Clark, Hendricks, Brown, & Cropsey, 2014). The relationship between family conflict and suicide should be the object of future study as this is a marker for suicidality that members of the criminal justice system may be more likely to admit to.…”

“…First, self-report of family dysfunction as well as self-report of physical symptoms appear to be markers for suicide risk in the community corrections population. There is evidence that assessment of mental health symptoms (a traditional marker of suicide risk) can be difficult in this population (Clark et al, 2014). If a member of the community corrections population reports family dysfunction or physical symptoms then psychological distress and suicidal ideation should be assessed.…”