Tactus International, a Dutch addiction treatment organisation, launches the first online addiction treatment programme in the UK today for people concerned about their drinking habits. Clients will be able to access e-therapy, anonymously if they wish, using accredited therapists in an online environment. The launch of lookatyourdrinking comes 4 years after the successful launch in the Netherlands of alcoholdebaas.nl, the original Dutch language programme. The UK programme expects to reach more people with a drinking problem at an earlier stage in the UK, as it has done in the Netherlands.
Lookatyourdrinking has been created by a team of leading psychiatrists and psychologists from the UK arm of Tactus, one of Holland's largest treatment centres, together with their Dutch team of online treatment specialists. The original programme has been an incredible success since launching in the Netherlands 4?? years ago. Results have shown that clients who finished the programme decreased their alcohol consumption and alcohol related problems significantly. In the Netherlands, people have been much readier to engage with online programmes; have come from groups previously reticent about engaging in treatment; and are seeking help much earlier in the addiction cycle, when health problems are at an early stage, as evidenced by Tactus in the American Journal of Psychiatry*1.
Lookatyourdrinking expects to treat up to 150 people with an alcohol problem in the first year, and expects much larger numbers than that to use and visit the site more generally. In the Netherlands over 2500 clients have already been treated online since 2005.
Lookatyourdrinking - the website
Lookatyourdrinking comprises five constituent parts: Information, online contact, e-therapy, after-care and scientific research. The site provides information and also online contact for people concerned about their drinking habits where people can exchange experiences and garner support from others in similar situations. Visitors to the site will also be able to access a unique, clinically robust, online therapy programme to help them make positive changes in relation to their alcohol consumption. They receive bespoke therapy (not real time i.e. asynchronous, within three working days) written by an accredited therapist. Lookatyourdrinking is easy accessible and the anonymous online treatment gives clients the opportunity to work at their own pace and in their own time and home, everyday of the week. They will also be able to retain completed work files, exercises, and therapy histories for future use.
How big is the problem?
Alcohol misuse represents a major burden to the NHS and the wider health and social care systems. The Department of Health estimates that nationally, 6% of men and 2% of woman can be classified as alcohol dependent. This equates to 1.1 million people. Among them there is a large discrepancy between the number of those who need alcohol treatment and those who actually access services, with approximately only 1 in 18 (5.6%) of alcohol dependent drinkers entering specialist treatment nationally every year*2.
Lookatyourdrinking provides a cost effective alternative to this problem. "We will be working hard to make this treatment available to NHS clients and talks are already taking place with selected Primary Care Trusts", says Marco Martinez, Managing Director of Tactus International.
Martinez continued: "The website, including forums, chat rooms and general information is free to all but in the first instance, the e-therapy treatment programme is for clients paying ??1,250 for part 1 and ??1,025 for part 2 of the 16 week programme; significantly less than many residential or day care programmes."
*1 Postel, M.G., de Jong, C. A. J., & de Haan, H. A. (2005).
Does e-therapy for problem drinking reach hidden populations?
The American Journal of Psychiatry, 162(12), 2393.
*2 Source for all figures: All Party Parliamentary Group on Alcohol Misuse (Alcohol Concern May 2009)
Source
Tactus International
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий