Faculty Bibliography

Co-occurring mental illness and addiction is very common and results in worse treatment outcomes compared to singly diagnosed addicted individuals. Integrated treatment for co-occurring disorders is associated with better treatment outcomes; however there is a wide range of what is included in integrated treatment. Due to patient and staff interests, integrated treatment often includes complementary and alternative therapies, including music and art therapy. There is a need to study how these approaches effect treatment engagement, retention, and outcome. This study was a prospective naturalistic non-randomized pilot study without a control group that sought to evaluate how participation in a music therapy program affected treatment outcomes for individuals with co-occurring mental illness and addiction. In summary, music therapy appears to be a novel motivational tool in a severely impaired inpatient sample of patients with co-occurring disorders. Future studies of music therapy in integrated co-occurring disorder setting should include a control group

This study assesses medical students' use of and attitudes towards club drugs, classified as 'Generation I' (i.e., cocaine and lysergic acid diethylamide), and 'Generation II' (i.e., methylenedioxymethamphetamine [MDMA], ketamine, gamma hydroxybutyrate, methamphetamine, rohypnol, dextromethorphan) club drugs based on their initial widespread use in club settings. An anonymous questionnaire was administered to 340 medical students. The prevalence of any club drug use was 16.8%, with MDMA (11.8%) and cocaine (5.9%) the most commonly used. Results discussed also include the relationship of age and gender to having ever used club drugs and to their attitudes regarding use. Additionally, the study identifies differences in patterns of use and attitudes toward Generation I versus Generation II club drugs based on age, gender, and participants' prior club drug use. Findings are compared to those of earlier studies about medical students and those in a similar age group in the general population

Medical care has long been associated with religion and spirituality, but in recent years a trend has arisen to introduce diverse spiritually oriented approaches in the context of empirically grounded practice. This article reviews the application of these approaches in contemporary medical practice. It highlights the relative utility of such applications, the use of spiritual assessment of the patient, and the role of the clergy and nursing in introducing spirituality into the clinical setting. It then presents findings from a program developed by the authors to employ spiritual support groups in the general hospital in order to aid patients in coping with illness, and to develop among them a more positive identification with their treatment providers.

The prominence of Twelve-Step programs has led to increased attention on the putative role of spirituality in recovery from addictive disorders. We developed a 6-item Spirituality Self-Rating Scale designed to reflect a global measure of spiritual orientation to life, and we demonstrated here its internal consistency reliability in substance abusers on treatment and in nonsubstance abusers. This scale and the measures related to recovery from addiction and treatment response were applied in three diverse treatment settings: a general hospital inpatient psychiatry service, a residential therapeutic community, and methadone maintenance programs. Findings on these patient groups were compared to responses given by undergraduate college students, medical students, addiction faculty, and chaplaincy trainees. These suggest that, for certain patients, spiritual orientation is an important aspect of their recovery. Furthermore, the relevance of this issue may be underestimated in the way treatment is framed in a range of clinical facilities

The purpose of the present study was to assess the relationship of history of gang involvement to engagement in Therapeutic Community (TC) treatment. Residents (N = 222) at two Daytop facilities completed a survey assessing sociodemographic characteristics, prior gang involvement and multiple aspects of TC functioning. Residents with prior gang involvement (21%) were younger and less educated than those without prior gang involvement. Although gang involved residents were more likely to achieve a high work role status in the program they scored lower on multiple indicators of engagement in treatment including acceptance of Daytop philosophy and TC clinical progress

This study was designed to provide an independent evaluation of the oversight and rehabilitation of substance-impaired physicians. Records of 104 physicians who had completed their monitoring period by the New York State Committee on Physicians' Health were selected at random from CPH files. They had been followed for an average of 41.3 months. Practice characteristics and substance use before admission, as well as workplace monitoring, twelve-step attendance, urine toxicologies, and relapse incidence after admission are reported. Significant intercorrelations among these variables were ascertained by logistic regression. The utility of twelve-step-based rehabilitation as part of a treatment plan for sustaining abstinence and averting relapse is discussed

This analysis of five recovery narratives from leaders of a peer-led, 12-Step-based self- help group in a methadone treatment program highlights the importance of spiritually-mediated role transformation in the recovery process. For these men and women in their forties and fifties, their progression to a leadership role helping others with their recovery validated the spiritual transformation they regarded as underlying their own recovery process. Assumption of this new leadership/helper role marked a tangible sign that their deepened spirituality allowed them to assume a new, higher function in a struggle with the addiction that had plagued their lives. For these peer leaders, methadone was at the core of the group experience and an aid to spiritual transformation