Screening and Assessment of Co-Occurring Disorders in the Justice ...

Concerns•y•y•yThe DALI was developed and validated on newly admitted psychiatricinpatients in a predominantly Caucasian, rural populationFuture research is needed to validate its use in ethnically and culturallydiverse populations, and in criminal justice and substance abuse treatmentsettingsThe instrument only examines alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine use disordersAvailability and CostThe DALI instrument, scoring instructions, and cutoff scores can be obtainedfree of charge from the Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center at http://dms.dartmouth.edu/prc/instruments/dali/ or at http://dms.dartmouth.edu/prc/.Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST)The DAST (Skinner, 1982) is a brief screening instrument that examinessymptoms of drug dependence. Several versions of the DAST are available,including the DAST-28, DAST-20, DAST-10, and DAST for Adolescents (DAST-A). The DAST reviews drug and alcohol problems occurring in the last 12 months.Items from the DAST were developed to align with those developed for theMichigan Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST). The DAST can be administeredthrough paper and pencil or computerized versions (Martino, Grilo, & Fehon,2000).Positive Features•y The DAST is brief to administer and is easily scored•y The DAST-10 has good convergent validity with the SCID in detectingalcohol problems, and shows incremental validity over the SCID alone forthis purpose (Maistro et al., 2000a, 2000b)•y The DAST-10 and DAST-20 have been found to have high internalconsistency, and good test-retest reliability and positive predictive valuefor DSM diagnoses (Carey et al., 2003; Cocco & Carey, 1998; Maistro et al.,2000a, 2000b; Martino et al., 2000; McCann et al., 2000; Peters et al., 2000)•y The DAST can distinguish between individuals with primary alcoholproblems, those with primary drug problems, and those with both sets ofproblems (Cocco & Carey, 1998)•y The DAST was found to be more effective than several other drug screeninginstruments in identifying drug dependence disorders among offenders(Peters et al., 2000)•y The DAST-A has been found to be a reliable and valid screening devicefor use with adolescents in psychiatric settings (Martino et al., 2000). TheDAST-A is more likely to underestimate than overestimate substance useproblems76