Brief interventions in Substance use treatment. Social Sciences

Brief Interventions in Substance Use Treatment
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Brief interventions in Substance use treatment
Brief intervention in the treatment of substance use is a cost-effective measure used in primary care settings used to help patients reduce their alcohol consumption and smoking levels. Health professionals use it to prevent high-risk individuals from falling into substance abuse. They encourage such individuals to control or leave their harmful habits. Brief interventions can cause a patient to seek intensive treatment at a specialized substance treatment center. They are typically short counseling sessions which advice problematic drug users. They do not target severe drug users. This paper examines a population survey conducted in England by Brown et al. (2016) based on brief interventions in primary care settings.
In Brown et al (2016) study, the sample population was based on a representative sample of 15, 252 drawn from the Toolkit studies of Smoking and Alcohol. These are household surveys that track and monitor England's substance use. The sample was taken in 2014, with over 1800 adults surveyed monthly. The respondents ranged from 16 years and above. A combination of a simple quota and random probability criteria was used to compile the sample (Brown et al.,2016). These methods helped create a nationally representative sample that minimized selection bias.
The researchers selected respondents who had visited their GP surgery in the preceding year. It was based on the respondent's data collection for 9-months from March 2014 and November. The study checked on whether the interviewees had smoked tobacco or consumed alcohol regularly within the last six months. The sample was grouped into those who only received brief interventions and those who also received intensive treatments after the brief interventions. Researchers also sought to establish the respondents' data relating to sex, occupation, age, education level, region, and...