The Practical Adolescent Diagnostic Interview (PADDI), a structured diagnostic interview designed to gather basic information about substance use disorders, mental health conditions, and related experiences, was used in routine evaluation of all adolescents committed to two juvenile detention centers. Anonymous data from 252 consecutively admitted adolescents were analyzed to assess the prevalence and severity of problem areas and to provide a preliminary exploration of interrelationships among those problems. Results demonstrated that a majority of adolescents manifested multiple problems. Whereas prevalence rates were high across gender, females displayed significantly greater mental health problems and maltreatment histories.

a clinical psychologist, has developed clinical assessment instruments for over 25 years and has served on accreditation panels for corrections based behavioral health programs. He provides training and technical assistance to states and organizations and is Clinical Associate Professor of Community Health at Brown University. Dana E. Hunt, Ph.D., a sociologist with over twenty-five years of experience in drug research, has conducted studies on methadone, HIV programming, experimental testing of non-traditional drug treatment, and developed methods for estimating the number of hardcore users. Recently she managed and directed the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program. William Rhodes, Ph.D., an economist, is principal scientist and fellow at Abt Associates, Inc. He specializes in evaluation and quantitative analysis and designed ADAM's sampling and analysis plans. Current projects range from an evaluation of family therapeutic drug courts to assessing the economic damage of hypothetical terrorist attacks in American cities. K. Jack Riley is Director of RAND Public Safety and Justice (PSJ). PSJ includes centers on criminal justice, public safety and drug policy research. He leads projects on terrorism, gun violence and drug policy, including a project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson foundation to analyze drug prosecutions in California.A national multi-site monitoring system for determining prevalence of alcohol and drug involvement in arrestees sought to refine the screening for substance dependence among persons arrested and incarcerated in local jails. Fifteen items were selected from the content of existing alcohol and drug abuse screens. These items were evaluated against a detailed diagnostic interview covering criteria of the DSM-IV. A total of 310 prisoners incarcerated within the previous 48 hours were recruited as subjects. Almost 65% of the subjects had a positive diagnosis of dependence for one or more substances. A six-item screen identified by the acronym UNCOPE emerged as the best set of screening items for identifying dependence on alcohol and/or drugs. The UNCOPE had sensitivity of 88% and specificity of 83% for the sample as a whole. It performed similarly irrespective of gender or ethnicity and appears to have potential utility in a wide range of populations.

This study sought to determine whether select pretreatment demographic and in-treatment clinical variables predict premature treatment discharge at 6 and 12 months among patients receiving methadone maintenance treatment (MMT). Data were abstracted from electronic medical records for 1,644 patients with an average age of 34.7 years (SD = 11.06) admitted to 26 MMT programs located throughout the United States from 2009 to 2011. Patients were studied through retrospective chart review for 12 months or until treatment discharge. Premature discharge at 6- and 12-month intervals were the dependent variables, analyzed in logistic regressions. Clinical predictor variables included average methadone dosage (mg/d) and urinalysis drug screen (UDS) findings for opioids and various nonopioid substances at intake and 6 months. Pretreatment demographic variables included gender, race/ethnicity, employment status, marital status, payment method, and age at admission. UDS findings positive (UDS+) for cocaine at intake and 6 months were found to be independent predictors of premature discharge at 12 months. UDS+ for opioids at 6 months was also an independent predictor of premature discharge at 12 months. Higher average daily methadone dosages were found to predict retention at both 6 and 12 months. Significant demographic predictors of premature discharge at 6 months included Hispanic ethnicity, unemployment, and marital status. At 12 months, male gender, younger age, and self-pay were found to predict premature discharge. Select demographic characteristics may be less important as predictors of outcome after patients have been in treatment beyond a minimum period of time, while others may become more important later on in treatment.

The responses of an unselected psychiatric outpatient sample to the SCL-90, a self-report checklist of symptom complaints, were factor analyzed using a principal components procedure. Varimax rotation yielded five interpretable factors for which factor scores were derived. Results were compared with earlier studies using symptom checklists on selected outpatient diagnostic groups. Implications for future work with self-report symptom checklists are discussed.

A series of 414 chronic pain patients referred to Are Hospital, Are, Sweden, for evaluation and rehabilitation were administered a structured diagnostic interview to detect alcohol and drug misuse and dependence according to DSM-III-R criteria. A total of 97 (23.4%) met criteria for active alcohol, analgesic, or sedative misuse or dependency; an additional 39 (9.4%) met criteria for a remission diagnosis. Current dependency was most common for analgesics (12.6%) followed by alcohol (9.7%) and sedatives (7.0%).