Association between severity of illicit drug dependence and quality of life in a psychosocial care center in BRAZIL: cross-sectional study

Abstract

BackgroundQuality of life must be one of the main purposes for the treatment of drug users, requiring a better understanding of the association between the quality of life and the severity of dependency. This study aimed to investigate the correlation between severity of substance use in various areas of human functioning and quality of life of illicit drug users in a psychosocial care center for alcohol and drugs.MethodsThis cross-sectional study included 60 participants – illicit drug users – treated at a psychosocial care center for alcohol and drugs. Participants were evaluated with the short version of World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-Bref) instrument to measure the quality of life, the 6th version of Addiction Severity Index (ASI-6) to assess the severity of dependence in several areas and the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) to identify the presence of psychiatric disorders. Pearson and Spearman correlation tests and linear regression were applied to verify the association between the severity of dependence and the quality of life, and Student’s t-test to compare the mean quality of life between individuals with and without psychiatric comorbidities.ResultsNegative correlation was found between the severity of dependence on the drugs dimensions: alcohol, psychiatric, medical, legal, family/social support and family/social problems of ASI-6, and the quality of life domains measured by the WHOQOL-Bref. The evidence was strongest in the psychiatric and medical dimensions. There was a significant difference in the quality of life mean among participants presenting or not presenting psychiatric comorbidities, for the psychological domain in anxiety disorders, and for the physical and psychological domains in mood disorders.ConclusionThe quality of life decreased as the severity of dependence increased, with different results in the various areas of the participant’s life. This result emphasizes the need for training the professional team which works in the substance use disorders area for more comprehensive diagnostic evaluations and more appropriate therapeutic interventions for each area. The associations were more evident in the medical and psychiatric fields, indicating the need for greater attention to be paid in relation to medical and psychiatric comorbidities.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12955-017-0795-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Quality of Life in Patients With Methamphetamine Use Disorder: Relationship to Impulsivity and Drug Use Characteristics

“…Collectively, clinicians should pay special attention to patients with multiple SUDs because their potentially low quality of life may affect the outcomes. Finally, most QOL domains in patients with severe MAUD were worse than those patients with mild to moderate MAUD, confirming the results of previous studies that severity is a stable predictor of poor QOL no matter what assessments was used (35,61).…”

“…In addition to impulsivity, there are other factors that were consistently associated with the QOL of patients with SUDs, of which the most commonly studied were the characteristics related to drug use, including the frequency of drug use (33,34), the severity of SUDs (35,36), comorbidities with mental disorders (37,38) and polysubstance use (39). In fact, in addition to the above-mentioned drug use characteristics, there are also the age of onset of SUDs, the number of relapse and comorbidities with other SUDs, which seem to have been overlooked in previous studies.…”

“…Overall, the main purpose of this study was to identify the degree to which impulsivity and some previously less discussed drug use characteristics explain the variations in QOL, especially to clarify the relationships between these clinical variables and QOL in different domains. It is worth emphasizing that most previous studies have used the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) to assess the severity of SUDs (35,36), which may produce some bias due to the self-reported data. In order to modify this, we obtained the severity of SUDs through the semi-structured interviews in this study, according to the diagnostic criteria of SUDs in DSM-5.…”

Quality of Life of Drug Users

“…However, the type of substance used is apparently not the only factor capable of causing a low QoL. The drug use intensity, the emotional and social relationships of the individual, in addition to the previous history of health (physical and mental) can influence the way in which he or she perceives his or her QoL (Campêlo et al, 2017;Costenbader et al, 2007;Narvaez et al, 2015).…”

Health-Related Quality of Life and Influencing Factors in Drug Addicts based on the scale QLICD-DA: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Compared with patients with other chronic diseases, the decline in the quality of life of drug-dependent persons is determined by the comprehensive negative impact of drug use in several areas. Moreover, drug-dependent persons usually only seek treatment when they suffer from serious consequences, while patients with other chronic diseases pay more attention to their diseases and will engage in a certain degree of prevention and health care consumption [25]. Moreover, drug-dependent persons are more likely to experience criminal charges, which puts them under various pressures.…”