Summary

Following completion of the Dual Diagnosis programme, significant and large reductions in psychological markers of alcohol/substance dependency were observed. These results suggest that the introduction of the LDQ as a measure to evaluate this programme was been successful and its use will continue in 2017.

These findings support previous studies and literature which regard the LDQ as a suitable tool for the evaluation of interventions for adults with substance dependency (Tober, Brearley, Kenyon, Raistick & Morley, 2000) and psychiatric difficulties (Ford, 2003).

It is recognised that it can be challenging to collect psychometric data from individuals with substance use difficulties. According to Tober et al. (2000), service users with substance difficulties can find it difficult to commit to completing follow-up measures for many reasons including motivation, difficulties with attendance and convenience of appointment times given.

In 2014, despite efforts from clinical staff, collecting post data proved challenging and resulted in the data capture of only 26% of those who completed the programme in 2014.

To overcome this difficulty, it was decided that completion of post measures would happen in session with therapists during the exit interview and would become part of each client’s discharge plan. This would be monitored using the referral spread sheet for service users and reviewed monthly by the Dual Diagnosis Service coordinator.

The pre and post data available for participants increased from 60.4% in 2015 to 85.5% in 2016. This represents a promising trend in improvements in data collection.