Introduction: Employment and Substance Misuse

Abstract

This special issue of Substance Use & Misuse contains nine articles based on presentations given at the Employment and Drug Abuse conference hosted by the University of Kentucky Center on Drug and Alcohol Research in April 2005. The research studies presented in this volume examine drug user characteristics related to employment, issues in measuring employment and substance misuse, and how intervening with substance misusers can improve their employment and employment-related skills. These studies were conducted in a broad range of populations including treatment and out-of-treatment samples, substance misusers receiving public assistance, and drug-involved criminal justice populations. This collection of papers adds to understanding the role that employment may play in substance use and treatment outcomes.

Notes

*The journal's style utilizes the category substance abuse as a diagnostic category. Substances are used or misused; living organisms are and can be abused. Editor's note.

^†Treatment, as a process, value, and ideology, can be usefully categorized into professional-based, tradition-based, mutual help–based (AA, NA, etc.) and self-help (“natural recovery”) models. There are no unique models or techniques used with substance users—of whatever types—that aren't also used with non-substance users. In the West, with the relatively new ideology of “harm reduction” as well as a consideration of quality of life, there are now new set of goals in addition to those derived from/associated with the older tradition of abstinence-driven models. Editor's note.