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. 2022 Jan 31:12:790203.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.790203. eCollection 2021.

Link Between Perception of Treatment Need and Craving Reports in Addiction

Laura Lambert  1   2   3 , Fuschia Serre  1   2   3 , Berangere Thirioux  4 , Nematollah Jaafari  4   5 , Perrine Roux  6 , Marie Jauffret-Roustide  7   8   9 , Laurence Lalanne  10 , Jean-Pierre Daulouède  2   11 , Marc Auriacombe  1   2   3   12
Affiliations

Link Between Perception of Treatment Need and Craving Reports in Addiction

Laura Lambert et al. Front Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Background: Perception of treatment need (PTN), a component of clinical insight, is associated to negative addiction treatment outcomes when low. Our hypothesis was that lower PTN was associated with less craving when reported retrospectively, the most common measure of craving in clinical settings.

Objective: To explore the association between PTN and craving among a dataset of subjects with severe substance use disorders.

Methods: Participants were recruited from outpatient addiction clinic admissions or harm reduction program services. Good and low PTN were based on consistency between severe addiction (at least six DSM-5 criteria) and self-report need for addiction treatment from the Addiction Severity Index. Craving was retrospectively characterized over the past 30 days. Multiple regression analyses were conducted.

Results: Participants with low PTN (n = 97) retrospectively reported less frequent and intense episodes of craving, compared with participants with good PTN (n = 566) after controlling for sociodemographic factors, addiction type, and severity (p < 0.0001).

Conclusion: Low perception of treatment need among subjects with severe addictions is associated to less retrospective report of craving, which may contribute to reduced efficiency of treatment. Further studies are needed to explore the mechanisms of the association.

Keywords: addiction; clinical insight; craving; perception of treatment need; substance use disorder.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart of selection of subjects among ADDICTAQUI and COSINUS cohorts.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Diagram distribution of subjects according to PTN groups and craving parameters. (A) Frequency (n = 659); (B) mean intensity (n = 660); (C) maximal intensity (n = 662). The density diagram shows how the data are distributed for each craving value: the wider the diagram, the more subjects have that craving value (violin type, equal area size). The whisker boxes show the distributions of the data according to quartiles, range, and median; the isolated points are the outliers.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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