The relative effectiveness of a medical hospitalization program vs a feedback-behavior modification program in treating alcohol and drug abusers.

There is a sparsity of studies specifying the relative effectiveness of different types of treatment programs in treating a similar target population of drug and alcohol abusers in the same locale. In this paper, two drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs are described and their relative effectiveness compared in treating similar target populations. The first treatment program evaluated is a medically oriented hospitalization program and the second is a short-term therapeutic community program, called "Feedback" because it is structured on the basis of a collection of feedback and behavior modification principles and techniques. Both programs were implemented by basically the same staff and both treated similar target populations of multiple drug abusers and alcohol abusers during comparable time periods. The results indicated that the feedback program was significantly more effective in rehabilitating multiple drug abusers (nonheroin abusers) than the hospitalization program with regard to three criteria (return to work for 60 days, perform effectively according to the supervisor, and control drug or alcohol problems). But both programs were equally effective in rehabilitating alcohol abusers (problem drinkers and alcoholics).