Drug abuse program - Assignment Example

Research Paper on Drug Abuse Program: In the past two decades, many measures have been taken by the government in order to improve the delivery of health care services particularly with reference to the drug abuse treatment and psychological health improvement in the Los Angeles County. People addicted to substance abuse that also suffer from mental problems are said to have dual diagnosis. Measures have been taken to increase the access of dually diagnosed people to medical care and coordinate the required services for such individuals.

To make the system more efficient, it was imperative that the current status of the delivery of service was thoroughly researched. In order to achieve that, a study was conducted in which the administrators and the treatment staff of the programs based on substance abuse and mental health, who served the dually diagnosed patients were involved. A total of 15 administrators and 99 staff members considered the accessibility of the dually diagnosed patients to health care services and the coordination of health care services much lower in comparison to 10 mental health administrators and 136 staff members, who gave a higher rating on each of the two factors (Grella, Gil-Rivas, and Cooper, 2004).

In order to improve the coordination in the delivery of mental health services in substance abuse treatment and mental health improvement programs, the divergence in the concepts of the administrators needs to be lessened first because efficient working of the system requires them to work in close collaboration with one another. References: Grella, C. E., Gil-Rivas, V., and Cooper, L. (2004). Perceptions of mental health and substance abuse program administrators and staff on service delivery to persons with co-occurring substance abuse and mental disorders.

The Journal of Behavioral Health Services and Research. 31(1): 38-49. DOI: 10.1007/BF02287337.