Friday, January 4, 2013

Cognitive behavioral therapy adds no value to drug treatment for opioid dependence

HealthCanal.com
The study, which could change how such dependence is viewed and treated in the U.S. healthcare system, appears online in the American Journal of Medicine. The medication, buprenorphine, has been in use for a decade, and is now prescribed to treat opioid dependence more than any other medication of its kind. Prescription by primary care and office-based physicians accounts for much of this increase. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an intervention that has demonstrated effectiveness for many psychiatric conditions and substance use disorders, even beyond the period of treatment, but the impact of combining it with buprenorphine has not been clear until now.