The Effect of Information Therapy on Treatment Adherence among Patients Referred to Addiction Treatment Centers

Abstract

Background: The low level of drug adherence in addicts who are quitting is one of the biggest challenges inthe treatment and management of this disease. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the effect ofinformation therapy on adherence to treatment among the patients in addiction treatment centers.Methods: The present quasi-experimental study was performed on 60 patients referred to addictiontreatment centers in Jiroft City, Iran. The control and experimental groups were selected using simplerandom sampling method. The 8-item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale was used for data collection. Thelevel of adherence to treatment was assessed before and after the intervention, which consisted of 6 one-hourtraining sessions per week.Findings: The adherence to medication was low in both experimental and control groups before thenotification. However, the chi-square value obtained by comparing the frequencies of the experimental andcontrol groups in three variables of adherence level (high, moderate, and low) was 9.84 which wasstatistically significant (P = 0.007). Therefore, there was a significant difference between the experimentaland control groups after information therapy. In fact, the information in the experimental group had asignificant and positive effect.Conclusion: Because of the low level of adherence to treatment, it is recommended to use informationtherapy to give information on timely and correct use of drugs as well as its importance in the treatment ofaddiction; so that the level of adherence would improve.

Keywords

• treatment adherence and compliance
• information therapy
• patient compliance
• substance abuse treatment centers