Research On The Barriers To Opioid Addicts’ Participation In Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT)

Objectives:Understand opioid addicts’ recognition and attitude to MMT, and the barriers to opioid addicts’ participation in community MMT, to provide a scientific basis for the expansion of MMT coverage and the improvement of MMT-related policies.Methods:A cross-sectional survey was conducted this time, in which quantitative and qualitative methods were combined for collecting the relevant information of target objects, and judgement sampling was integrated with respondent-driven sampling for sample acquisition. Quantitative research was done by questionnaire to understand the essential information and drug addiction history of the respondents, as well as their understanding of MMT and desire to participate in MMT, to identify the influencing factors that hindered them from participating in community MMT, and meanwhile characterize the 29 respondents. For data entry, Epi 3.0 was adopted, and for data analysis, SPSS21.0 was adopted.Results:350 samples were selected, and 327 valid questionnaires were collected from 288 males (88.1%) and 39 females (11.9%); The youngest respondent was aged 16, the oldest was 65, and the average age was 39.68±9.26; most of the respondents were Han people (70.95%), most of the respondents had a junior middle school degree or below,43.43% of the respondents were unmarried,43.5% were unemployed, and 267 respondents were permanent residents (81.65%). The respondents aged below 18 that abused opioid for the first time accounted for 26.30%. Those that mainly used heroin not by injection accounted for 38.53%, and those that had a strong will to receive treatment accounted for 67.58%. Economically, they were mainly supported by themselves and family members.27 respondents said that they never heard of methadone treatment (8.26%),33 didn’t know the location of the local methadone clinic (10.10%), and 43.8% got the location information from their peers. The total score of methadone knowledge was 8.60±2.07.65.44% of the respondents said that they would consider participating in MMT in future, while 34.56% would not.The first five reasons why the respondents didn’t receive MMT:methadone is harder to reject than narcotic drugs (13.67%), self-control (12.66%), methadone has more side effects (0.95%), it’s troublesome to take medicine every time, and fear of being caught/exposure of identity (7.94%). The respondents that would not participate in MMT in future had more wrong understandings of opioid addiction and MMT. There were different factors that hindered the respondents with different demographic characteristics from participating in MMT.Conclusions:The main barriers to the respondents that didn’t participate in MMT include:methadone is harder to reject than narcotic drugs, self-control, methadone has more side effects, it’s troublesome to take medicine every time, and fear of being caught/exposure of identity. In particular, the wrong understanding of MMT was a more serious barrier. The opioid addicts obtained the information of MMT mainly from their peers, and this is a main reason why they misunderstood MMT. It’s suggested that attention should be paid to peer education on these people and to the integrity of MMT, the standardized training for medical staff should be strengthened, peer leaders should pass correct information on to the target group, and meanwhile respondent-driven sampling method should be used to improve the coverage of MMT. Besides, cooperation with police and other relevant departments should be enhanced, and society propaganda should be boosted in various ways to broaden information dissemination, so that the social masses should not only get a profound understanding of the negative effects of drug addiction, but also change their impression on opioid addicts, so as to reduce social discrimination. Various activities should be carried out with the support of relevant departments, with opioid addicts to be counted, to provide conditions for the rehabilitation of their social functions. MMT service should be improved flexibly in accordance with the demographic characteristics of different regions and resources should be utilized effectively for an improvement in the accessibility and convenience of service.