NCT03345394

Effectiveness of Contingency Management in the Treatment of Crack Addiction in Brazil

Effectiveness of Contingency Management in the Treatment of Crack Addiction for Individuals Living in the "Crackland" Region. A Single-blind Randomized Controlled Trial

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 98 (actual)
• Sponsor: Federal University of São Paulo · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Crack addiction has become a severe public health problem in Brazil. Crack users present elevated prevalence rates of psychiatric comorbidities, sexual transmitted infections and unemployment with high probability of living or have lived in the streets, history of incarceration and engagement in illegal activities. For the last 20 years a treatment called Contingency Management (CM) have achieved the best results regarding reduction of substance use, promotion of abstinence, treatment attendance and retention in treatment. The first CM study conducted in Brazil advocates for the efficacy of CM on all of these outcomes, suggesting that CM can be effective in a Brazilian population of crack users.

Detailed description

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of Contingency Management (CM) for crack users living in the "Crackland" region. To achieve this goal, regular treatment staff from Unidade Recomeço Helvétia treatment service will be capacitated in CM to latter-on apply the CM intervention in their respective services. The design will be a single-blind randomized clinical trial composed of a sample of 100 subjects with current diagnose for crack/cocaine dependence. Participants allocated to the control condition will receive 12 weeks of the usual care treatment provided by these two treatment facilities. Participants allocated to the experimental condition will receive the exact same treatment as control participants associated with CM. CM procedure will occur 2 timer per week (every Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday). Primary outcomes are: (1)retention in treatment; (2) reduction of crack use; (3) promotion of continuous crack cocaine abstinence. Secondary findings are reduction on psychiatric symptomatology. The investigator hypothesis is that participants in the CM condition will have a better treatment response in all studied outcomes.

Conditions

• Substance Use Disorders
• Contingency Management
• Addiction, Cocaine

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Contingency Management	Participants will receive vouchers with monetary value for submitting crack cocaine negative urine samples
BEHAVIORAL	Standard treatment	Participants will receive the standard treatment offered at Unidade Recomeço Helvétia treatment program

Timeline

• Start date: 2017-12-01
• Primary completion: 2020-12-01
• Completion: 2020-12-01
• First posted: 2017-11-17
• Last updated: 2021-04-08
• Results posted: 2021-04-08

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Brazil