Hot topics
Below is a list of all 45 hot topics – essays by Drug and Alcohol Findings explaining the background and evidence relating to topics which sometimes prompt heated debate. They are a popular way to get up to speed on the issues which matter in drug and alcohol policy and practice in Britain, and often too internationally. Sorted by the main topic addressed, the list shows in orange the type of entry, the year the hot topic was last updated, and the type of file you will download when you click on the title. In blue is the hot topic’s title followed by a brief description.
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HOT TOPIC 2017 HTM file
Residential rehabilitation: the high road to recovery?
Asks whether residential rehabilitation is particularly suited to today’s abstinence-based recovery ambitions, and whether nevertheless these services are under threat, treated as a last resort rather than a front-line option.
HOT TOPIC 2016 HTM file
Motivational interviewing: fast and flexible counselling style
Introduces and evaluates the most influential approach in substance use counselling in Britain – one perhaps as widely misunderstood as it is practised. Great advantage is applicability to substance users from the risky to the dependent.
HOT TOPIC 2016 HTM file
Are the drugs enough? Counselling and therapy in substitute prescribing programmes
Explore the somewhat heretical proposition that the counsellor can virtually be dispensed with in opiate substitute prescribing programmes with little loss of impact. The gain would be that methadone could be spread ‘thin and wide’, reaching more potential patients.
HOT TOPIC 2016 HTM file
Treatment staff matter
By focusing on the intervention as if it were a mechanical lever, research has not just ignored but sought to eliminate what now seems a more important factor – the influence of the practitioner and how they relate to the patient.
HOT TOPIC 2017 HTM file
Substance use treatment as part of a ‘wrap-around’ package of care
Asks whether supplementing addiction treatment with ‘wrap-around’ services is a distraction, or part of the core business of sustainably overcoming addiction. What’s for sure is that mental health, social and material resources, and the wherewithal for social inclusion, are all often lacking in addiction treatment caseloads; but does addressing these promote recovery?
HOT TOPIC 2016 HTM file
‘Recovery’: meaning and implications for treatment
Since 2008 the “recovery” objective has been at the heart of British drug treatment policy. Where did it come from and what does it mean for treatment services?
HOT TOPIC 2017 HTM file
Promoting recovery through employment
Employment is seen as the key to lasting recovery, but how realistic is it for people whose lifestyles have revolved around using and obtaining drugs?
HOT TOPIC 2020 HTM file
‘Dignity first’: improving the lives of homeless people who drink and take drugs
Putting people with experiences of homelessness and substance use problems at the centre of social policy, this hot topic asks what solutions would look like if they prioritised saving lives and improving lives.
HOT TOPIC 2016 HTM file
What do the patients want?
Focus is the apparently iconoclastic finding from a Scottish national treatment study that abstinence is the sole drug-focused goal for most patients in drug treatment: “At best these extrapolations were sloppy, at worst, deliberately misleading.”
HOT TOPIC 2016 HTM file
Individualising treatment: an obviously ‘good thing’?
Individualisation might seem an obvious and basic prerequisite to substance use treatment, but in fact services have often striven for uniformity.
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