Group Counselling in a Structured Naltrexone Treatment Program: A Randomized Control Trial of Group Counselling

Running head: CRITICAL EVALUATION OF DRUG AND ALCOHOL ABUSE
Critical evaluation of Drug and Alcohol Abuse
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CRITICAL EVALUATION OF DRUG AND ALCOHOL ABUSE
1) A randomized control trial of group counselling in a naltrexone treatment
program
This research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a structured Naltrexone treatment
program. This particular research was conducted in the Turning Point Alcohol and Drug
Centre, which is situated at Melbourne Australia (Tucker, et al., 2004). Naltrexone is a drug,
which is used as an opiate antagonist. This research was carried to examine the naltrexone
treatment within the community of Australia taking into consideration that naltrexone is the
most popular drugs and is highly recommended in the community setting.
The research contained 97 participants who received 50 mg dose of Naltrexone daily.
These participants were randomized either on experimental conditions (n=52) or control
conditions (n=45). However, the experimental group received a structured counselling
program and it used cognitive-behaviour relapse prevention approach. There was also a use
of intention-to-treat analyses for getting a conclusion.
Most of the participants were examined at Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre in
Victoria based in Australia. 316 individual participants were screened out of which 273 were
deemed to be “eligible” of the progress of the assessment. However, it was only 126
volunteers who were actually assessed. The research followed an experimental format thus it
is in tandem with the positivist paradigm and the quantitative aspect of the research has been
explored using various standards of Naltrexone treatment program. The entire outcome of the
research has been measured along the Opiate Treatment index, which refers to a structure
interview and takes 30 mins to complete. There are six domains under OTI namely; Drug
Use, HIV Risk-taking Behaviour, social Functioning, criminality, Health status, and
Psychological Adjustment. Other outcome standards that were used in this research “Heroin
Q” and “Polydrug Use” and if scored are high against these set standards it will be indicating
a greater dysfunction. A 21-item self-report questionnaire were framed using the Beck

CRITICAL EVALUATION OF DRUG AND ALCOHOL ABUSE
Depression Inventory (secondary Edition). A symptom Frequency Checklist of 36 item self-
report was also employed in this research. This self-report is based to assess the general
health care of the respective person. Both the physical and the mental health status were
measured from the scale 0 to 100. There are two treatment group where the control group did
not get any counselling program and the experimental group received the counselling
program. The procedures that were followed in this research includes urine drug screen,
pregnancy test and blood sample for liver functioning test were also covered.
The participants of the control group received case management and were given the
option of participating in the voluntary psychological intervention (Tucker, et al., 2004).
They were only deprived of structured counselling group.
The participants who were in the experimental group received the same service of the
control group. They also expected to attend the 12 week of structured group counselling. This
12-week Relapse Prevention Group Manual was designed for the purpose using the materials
from different sources. This manual is comprised of four modules namely Preventing
Relapse, Emotions, Relationship and Naltrexone and Global Lifestyle Change.
The major findings of this research are as follows:
 No significant difference were noticed between the two groups at the baseline of the
research.
 Even with the repeated use of ANOVA no significant differences were noticed
between the treatment group and the control group. However differences were noticed
between the groups by using the SF-36 Physical Health Subscale Score (p=.005). The
four variables effected the sizes greater than .20. This indicates that the differences
between the groups were quite small to be arrested.
 After conducting study at the regular intervals of 6 weeks, 12 weeks and 24 weeks the
findings did not support the primary hypothesis. The primary hypothesis of this