Methadone maintenance treatment

BMJ 1995;310:463 (18 February)

Letters

Methadone maintenance treatment

Britain has been overcommitted to psychological theories ofdrug dependence

EDITOR,--Michael Farrell and colleagues' review of maintenancetreatment with methadone fails to explain why there is onlyone British evaulation of such treatment or why there is a "virtualabsence of structure and regulation in Britain."¹ I suggestthat the lack of research was caused by the dominance of a fewindividuals and their commitment to psychological, usually behavioural,models of drug dependence.² As they rejected maintenance asa valid treatment for dependence,³ ⁴ the directors of Britishresearch into drug dependence failed to evaluate it. Rather,they spent nearly 30 years unsuccessfully searching for a curefor dependence on heroin.

The dominance of psychological theories in education about drugdependence and in training, in my opinion, influenced staffof the drug dependence units to refuse to provide maintenancetreatment. This meant that people who were dependent on drugshad to . . . [Full text of this article]

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