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Phone Based Continuing Care Gets Mixed Results

A recent study looked at 24 month outcomes when treatment includes 18 months of follow-up telephone counseling.  Alcohol dependent patients (252) – half of which were also cocaine dependent – completed 3 months of intensive outpatient treatment. Participants were then randomly placed in three groups: treatment as usual (TAU), TAU plus telephone monitoring and feedback (TM), or TAU plus telephone monitoring and feedback plus counseling (TMC).

TM participants received brief phone calls for up to 18 months (5-10 minute calls for 8 weeks, every other week for 10 months, and once per month for the last 6 months). Each call included a 10 item progress assessment covering current use and other risk and prevention factors. The call to the TMC group was the same as the TM but also included current goals and objectives, and coping responses to risky situations were rehearsed. Alcohol use was measured in “percentage of days drinking” and “any heavy drinking”.

Results showed that TM did not improve outcomes over TAU for males. However, adding TMC to standard care improved drinking outcomes for 18 months but effects on drinking did not persist beyond that point. Overall significant effects favoring TMC and TM over TAU were seen for women. TMC was found to be superior to TAU for patients with ”social support for drinking, low readiness for change, and previous alcohol treatments”.

Since none of these benefits persisted after the end of the 18 month treatment duration or remained significant after 24 months these findings suggest that benefits of telephone counseling as an adjunct to out-patient treatment only helps certain subgroups and may be limited in duration.

(McKay, JR, Van Horn, D, Oslin, DW, Ivey, M, Drapkin, ML, Coviello, DM, Yu, QIN, Lynch, KG,: Extended telephone-based continuing care for alcohol dependence” 24 month outcomes and subgroup analyses. Addcition, 106: 1760-1769, 2011.)

Related posts:

1. Continuing Care Research: What We Have Learned and Where We are Going
2. Treatment Outcomes for Women are Better than for Men
3. Continuing Care Unique to Each Program, Uniformly Valuable
4. Older Patients Do OK in Community-Based Treatment
5. Older Women Do Better in Treatment