Personality targeted interventions

The illicit use of prescription or injection substances is extremely prevalent among OST clients, and is linked to disability, morbidity, and mortality. Personality factors, such as impulsivity, anxiety sensitivity, hopelessness and sensation seeking are robustly implicated risk for substance misuse and related harm. Associations between these personality traits and substance misuse in OST clients were demonstrated. Indeed, a randomized controlled trial revealed that certain personality traits are also influential in severe addiction cases.

The main objective of this two-step project is to assess the feasibility of adapting brief personality-targeted coping skills interventions to address polysubstance misuse amongst opiate substitution therapy (OST) clients.

Step 1: Relevant information was gathered and analyzed to allow the effective adaptation of an existing intervention plan to use with OST clients.

Step 2: The intervention manuals were adapted based on information obtained from step 1 and the feasibility of the interventions with OST clients were assessed.