Strengths and weaknesses: clinician assessment effect on substance use treatment engagement and discharge

ABSTRACT

Substance use treatment is aimed at improving the well-being of the receiving clients. Given the clinician–client interactions inherent in treatment, understanding clinician influence on treatment outcomes is important. Utilizing clinical data mining, we used existing data from the clinical files of 444 clients who received substance use day treatment. Using multinomial logistic regression and linear regression, we examined whether and which client strengths and weaknesses perceived and recorded by clinicians during a client’s assessment predict client engagement and treatment completion. The results showed that willingness to seek treatment and outside support increased the likelihood of completing treatment, while financial support decreased it. We also found that clinician perceptions of a client’s inability to benefit from treatment predicted low levels of engagement in treatment. We then discuss implications for social work of this study.

KEYWORDS:

• Clinical data mining
• discharge
• engagement
• strengths
• substance use treatment
• weaknesses

Disclosure statement

During the time of data collection and for a short time afterward, the second author was paid by the organization where the data came from to provide clinical supervision and to consult on occasion. Further, the owner and president at the time of data collection were family relatives. The organization is now under new ownership. There is no financial gain or other incentive tied to the study reported in this manuscript. The study is independent of the clinical support he was paid to provide.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Brigham Young University, Office of Research & Creative Activities, Mentoring Environment Grants.