Alcohol and drug dependence symptom items as brief screeners for substance use disorders: results from the Clinical Trials Network.
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2012-03
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AIM:To address an urgent need for screening of substance use problems in medical settings, we examined substance-specific dependence criteria as potential brief screeners for the detection of patients with a substance use disorder (SUD). METHODS:The sample included 920 opioid-dependent adults who were recruited from outpatient treatment settings at 11 programs in 10 U.S. cities and who completed intake assessments of SUDs for a multisite study of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN003). Data were analyzed by factor analysis, item response theory (IRT), sensitivity, and specificity procedures. RESULTS:Across all substances (alcohol, amphetamines, cannabis, cocaine, sedatives), withdrawal was among the least prevalent symptoms, while taking large amounts and inability to cut down were among the most prevalent symptoms. Items closely related to the latent trait of a SUD showed good-to-high values of area under the receiver operating characteristic curve in identifying cases of a SUD; IRT-defined severe and less discriminative items exhibited low sensitivity in identifying cases of a SUD (withdrawal for all substances; time using for alcohol and sedatives; giving up activities for sedatives). CONCLUSIONS:Study results suggest that withdrawal and time using are much less reliable indicators for a SUD than taking larger amounts than intended and inability to cut down and that the latter two items should be studied further for consideration in developing a simplified tool for screening patients for SUDs in medical settings. These findings have implications for the use of common health indicators in electronic health records systems to improve patient care.
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Wu, Li-Tzy, Dan G Blazer, George E Woody, Bruce Burchett, Chongming Yang, Jeng-Jong Pan and Walter Ling (2012). Alcohol and drug dependence symptom items as brief screeners for substance use disorders: results from the Clinical Trials Network. Journal of psychiatric research, 46(3). pp. 360–369. 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2011.12.002 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19983.
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Li-Tzy Wu
Education/Training:
Pre- and post-doctoral training in mental health service research, psychiatric epidemiology (NIMH T32), and addiction epidemiology (NIDA T32) from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health
Fellow of the NIH Summer Institute on the Design and Conduct of Randomized Clinical Trials
Daniel German Blazer
I am currently semi-retired. Most of my recent work has been focused on roles with the National Academy of Medicine (former Institute of Medicine). I have chaired three committees during the past four years, one on the mental health and substance use workforce, one on cognitive aging, and one on hearing loss in adults. I currently also chair the Board on the Health of Select Populations for the National Academies.
In the past I have been PI on a number of research projects, including the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study, and the Clinical Research Center for Late Life Depression. More recently I have been involved with five research projects. The first, the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly (EPESE), included a study demonstrating that sleep complaints are more frequent in white compared to blacks, even when relevant demographic variables are controlled. In a second study, day-time napping was a significant predictor of mortality. A third study in the Piedmont of North Carolina revealed no difference in utilization or satisfaction with health services when urban elders were compared with rural elders. In a fourth study, self-rated health was not as strong a predictor of mortality, as has been found in previous studies, especially when controlling for important covariates.
A second research endeavor has been with the National Comorbidity Study. I led investigators who demonstrated that the prevalence of major depression is higher than previously estimated in national samples of persons between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five in the community and discussed the methodological issues that may contribute to this differing estimate. The risk-factor profile of pure major depression was compared with comorbid major depression. I will continue in this research during 1994/95 to look at Seasonal Affective Disorders (SAD).
I have also worked with my colleague Litzy Wu ScD in the study of substance use disorders and have published a number of papers related to substance use in the elderly. I also work closely with my colleague Celia Hybels, PhD looking at trajectories of depressive symptoms in older adults over time.
I spent considerable time during 1994/97 working on four books. I co-edited the second edition of Geriatric Psychiatry, to be published in the late winter of 1994 or early spring of 1995. I am working on a single author book, Freud vs. God: The End of the Debate/How Psychiatry Lost Its Soul and Christianity Lost Its Mind and on a research methods textbook for clinical psychiatry research. I have produced a second edition of Emotional Problems in Later Life. Since then our Textbook of Geriatric Psychiatry has gone through three additional editions and I published (based on my work during a sabbatical at the Center for Advanced Studies of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford) The Age of Melancholy (for which I received the Oscar Pfister Award from the American Psychiatric Association).
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