Effectiveness Bank Matrix Bite: Treatment not for the Patient but for the Community

The final row of the Alcohol Treatment Matrix enters the domain of treatment organised not primarily for the patient, but to safeguard the wider community, encountering what seems a core contradiction depicted on the cover of WHO guidance on alcohol treatment in prison. Its subtitle (“An opportunity for intervention”) seems belied by a photo of barbed wire-topped concrete walls, yet the same walls create the ‘dry space’ in which effective intervention may be possible. Also explored is whether it can ever be safe to leave children with severely dependent drinkers, and from a tragic story we learn how important it is to researchers to get the ‘right’ results.

What is this cell about? About treatment funded or ordered to safeguard the wider community, or studies of whether treatment in general has a safeguarding impact. Treatment focuses on the welfare of the individual patient, but it may be funded and organised by authorities whose primary motivation is to safeguard the wider community. In these cases, treatment is offered or imposed not because the substance user has sought it, but because it is thought that treating their substance use could result in benefits to the community. Read more...