A Housing First approach reduced the number of days in which homeless individuals with mental illness experienced problems tied to alcohol use but not illicit drug use, Maritt Kirst, Ph.D., and her associates at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, report.
She and her associates found a declining trend in alcohol use problems over time among participants in the intervention group, and the reduction among those participants proved significant at 24 months (P < .05). Similar declines were not seen among participants in the treatment-as-usual (TAU) group.
Those who participated in the intervention also experienced a drop in the amount of money spent on alcohol, compared with those in the TAU group, and that decline at 24 months also was significant (P < .05). However, the results among intervention participants did not extend to the use of drugs or the amount of money spent on drugs. The study suggests that “specific patterns and types of use need to be considered in the delivery of Housing First interventions,” the researchers concluded.
Read the full article at Drug and Alcohol Dependence (doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2014.10.019).