Comparison of demographic and clinical characteristics between opioid-dependent individuals admitted to a community-based treatment setting and those enrolled in a research-based treatment setting

Despite the significant developments in pharmacotherapy and behavioral treatments for addiction, the dissemination of new treatment methods into the community has been slow. It has been pointed out that treatments developed in research settings may be impractical in community treatment settings, which might help explain the transition lag. Screening and recruitment of participants for research studies might partially explain this, as there is evidence that substance-abusing individuals who participate in clinical research are different on a number of measures from treatment seekers. However, no study has directly compared treatment seekers with research participants drawn from similar populations using prospective methods. This study compared the demographic characteristics, drug use and psychosocial problem severity levels, and personality traits of opioid-dependent individuals seeking help in a community setting (n = 502) with those of opioid-dependent individuals in a primarily research-based drug abuse treatment setting (n = 459); both settings offered a similar set of treatment services (opioid agonist medication and counseling). Although the overall findings revealed numerous similarities between the groups, differences were also observed. Most notably, there were significantly fewer women in the research sample than in the community-based treatment sample. Other differences included a modest but statistically significant increase in psychosocial problem severity levels in the community-based treatment sample and higher drug use problem severity levels in the research sample. Interestingly, many of these differences were strongest in women as compared with men.