HARCP Archives

Browse by article

Browse by volume

Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems: 2007, 09, 4 (pages: 31 - 50)

The Need For Patient Education. Opinions And Attitudes On Heroin Addiction: Changes In Italy Over Ten Year (1995-2005)

Quilici C., Pacini M., Maremmani I.

Summary: Objective: that of making clear the level of neuroscientific knowledge and the cultural prejudices that call for targeted psychoeducational interventions in treating heroin dependence. Methods: after a time-interval of 10 years, and within the same socio-cultural environment, standardized methods have been used to map out the attitudes of groups of drug-addicted subjects undergoing treatment at local addiction treatment units (“SerT”) or in Therapeutic Communities (n=60), of young people at risk (n=30) and of subjects drawn from the general population (n=20). Results: our results show a poor, little-changed level of scientific knowledge and of the frequency of misconceptions about heroin-addiction in the recent past (1995-2005), along with a significant deterioration in the general population. The areas that most clearly reveal a need for psychoeducational interventions prove to be those linked with knowledge about the disease, with the attitudes of drug-addicts towards the onset of their addiction, with knowledge about the available therapeutic resources, with risks to health associated with drug-taking and with the choice of the most appropriate person to be in charge of therapeutic programs. Conclusions: nowadays, more than ever before, there is a need in Italy for an intensive psychoeducational program to be planned, to cover all the environments involved (social and health care structures, schools, therapeutic communities, and so on), and for this program to be clear and precisely targeted in its contents. Practical implications: major effort should be addressed towards the improvement of patients' insight and professionals' cultural attitudes, which appear to be stay in spite of rational awareness of therapeutic results or the understanding of scientific knowledge.