Help seeking attitudes and illegal drug use among methadone maintenance therapy patients in Malaysia

Abstract

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified substance use disorders as a significant public health concern for many countries. In Malaysia, the government took the step to address this concern in 2005 through the introduction of Methadone Maintenance Therapy (MMT) to treat opioid use disorders. The purpose of this study is to test whether help-seeking attitudes by MMT patients are associated with continued substance use.

Method: Participants were 171 patients who received MMT in 2 of the National Anti-Drug Agencies in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Participants were, on average, 45.35 years old (SD = 10.22) and approximately half of them were married. Participants’ Help Seeking Attitudes were measured using the 10-Item Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help–Short Form (ATSPPH-SF) (Fischer and Farina 1995). The dependent measure for this analysis was whether or not the participant had a positive drug screen in the past 6 months of their MMT.

Results: Frequencies indicate that 46.2% of the participants had positive drug screen results indicating illicit drug use during the past 6 months of MMT treatment. Logistic regression results indicate that more positive Help Seeking Attitudes are associated with reduced odds of a positive drug screen (O.R. = .87, 95% CI = .80, .93, p < .001). Participant perceptions that help-seeking is positive reduced the odds of having a positive drug screen.

Conclusions: This result suggests that research, practice, and policy efforts might include messages that aim to promote help-seeking and to reduce stigma associated with seeking help for substance use disorders.

Keywords:

• Methadone maintenance
• help seeking attitudes
• Malaysia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.