Unmet service needs in methadone maintenance.

Most drug abuse treatment agencies maintain a wide array of ancillary services, either on-site or through off-site referral resources, for helping meet the diverse social, medical, and psychological needs of clients. The extent to which these needs are met may be an important factor in client retention and outcomes. Perceived unmet service needs and their relationship to client outcomes were therefore studied in relationship to a framework for studying drug abuse treatment process factors. The outcomes in the present study were time in treatment and relapse to opioid use during treatment, and these were examined in relation to perceived need for services and their delivery (whether or not these services were received). The sample consisted of 590 methadone maintenance clients in 21 clinics in the RTI/TOPS data system. The results showed that the measure of unmet needs for services was not significantly related to time to relapse or to time in treatment. However, there appeared to be an indirect effect. There were differences for clinic type and a few significant interactions with other predictor variables used to study treatment process.