Clinical outcome of multimodal rehabilitative care for young patients with multiple drug abuse

Abstract

In our rehabilitation center patients with multiple drug abuse were treated with multimodal therapy, including medical care, medication, information, work and behavioral therapy in different settings, social support and sports. The patients live in a clinical setting with controlled abstinence.

To prove the effectiveness of this kind of therapy, we matched the patients using the following criterias: age, gender, comorbid psychiatric disorders (according to DSM-IV first axis), cluster of personality disorder (following DSM-IV clustering), duration of addiction (years), age of onset and socio-demographic status and education. Patients with somatic disorders, brain injury or epilepsy were excluded from the analysis. The GAF-development during the course of therapy was weekly monitored. We analysed the modification of GAF-scores according to global and specific therapeutic (i.e. duration of therapy) effects. Patients were in average 24 years old and showed addiction symptoms since 7.8 years. Treated were 150 male and 72 female patients. They all showed comparable levels of education. GAF-progression shows a very strong correlation (r=.825; p<.001) with the duration of multimodal therapy. Interestingly, GAF-progression was independent from comorbid disorders, education or gender. According to our results, we conclude that multimodal abstinence-orientated rehabilitation therapy in patients with multiple drug abuse is highly effective and correlated to duration of therapy.