Addictions
The Scottish Addictions executive group meets every three months for an all day meeting with a teaching and business component.
It's a place to discuss ideas and trends within the field in Scotland. If you're interested in attending, please contact our Chair.
All meetings are held at the Golden Lion hotel in Stirling.
Co-Chairs: Rebecca Lawrence (Drugs) & Susanna Galea Singer (Alcohol)
Vice Chair: Seonaid Anderson
RCPsychiS Office Contact: Susan Richardson
General Adult and Addictions Joint Faculty Conference 2022
The Addictions Faculty held a joint conference with General Adult Psychiatry on 11 May 2022 in Dundee. This was the first in person event the College in Scotland had held in over two years. The long awaited return to face to face events saw the Faculties discuss the theme 'Back to Business' with a range of excellent speakers covering a variety of topics. The presentation slides which can be made available will be added shortly.
Addictions Conference 2021
The Addictions Faculty of the RCPsych in Scotland held its annual conference online via Zoom on Friday 5th March 2021. A successful and thought provoking conference was attended by over 60 delegates from all over the UK including Members of all grades as well as a few Non-Members too! Thank you to all who joined us on the day. Those who registered/attended the conference, may view the recording (valid for two months) by requesting the link from Susan Richardson.
Resources
Opioids Aware: A resource for patients and healthcare professionals to support prescribing of opioid medicines for pain
A new opioid prescribing resource has been launched by the Faculty of Pain Medicine, Royal College of Anaesthestists; funded by Public Health England.
Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs - Recovery Committee Report
How can opioid substitution therapy (and drug treatment and recovery systems) be optimised to maximise recovery outcomes for service users?
Supporting documents
- Crawford M J et al. Selecting outcome measures in mental health: the views of service users. Journal of Mental Health, Aug 2011; 20(4): 336–346
- Mental Health Outcomes Compendium - National Institute for Mental Health in England
- Editorial. Routine outcome assessment in mental health services. Psychological Medicine, 2002, 32, 1339-1343
- Dr Peter Trigwell et al. Framework for Routine Outcome Measurement in Liaison Psychiatry. Faculty Report
Smoking
- Ash Scotland briefing on Smoking, alcohol and opioid dependence
- For methadone maintenance, ‘Discussion’ from Nahvi et al. Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, 2014,9:9. (PDF)‘Multiple studies suggest that smoking cessation medication adherence is an important determinant of cessation success, including among methadone-maintained smoker. In a retrospective cohort study in which methadone maintenance patients were prescribed varenicline during routine clinical care, varenicline treatment duration was significantly associated with smoking cessation. In two large smoking cessation trials among methadone maintenance patients, adherence to nicotine patch treatment was also shown to be associated with improved smoking cessation outcomes. Methadone-maintained smokers had fewer cigarettes per day and a 7.1x increased odds of abstinence on days in which they used patches compared to days they did not.’
- Cookson C et al. Smoking and its treatment in addiction services: Clients’ and staff behaviour and attitudes.
- BMC Health Services Research 2014, 14:304. ‘A large unmet clinical need is evident with a widespread failure to deliver smoking cessation interventions to an extraordinarily high prevalence population of smokers in addiction services. This is despite the majority of smokers reporting motivation to quit. Staff smoking and attitudes may be a contributory factor in these findings.’