Psychotherapy Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Psychotherapy, including details on psychiatry, psychoanalysis, methods, outcomes.

Contingency management: utility in the treatment of drug abuse disorders.

Stitzer ML, Vandrey R

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. mstitzer@jhmi.edu

Contingency management (CM) is a strategy that uses positive reinforcement to improve the clinical outcomes of substance abusers in treatment, especially sustained abstinence from drugs of abuse. Further, CM has been adopted to improve methodology and interpretation of outcomes in clinical trials testing new pharmacotherapies and to improve adherence to efficacious medications in substance abuse patients. Thus, CM has proven to be widely useful as a direct therapeutic intervention and as a tool in treatment development.

Published 19 March 2008 in Clin Pharmacol Ther, 83(4): 644-7.
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