Impacts-of-methamphetamine-in-Victoria-Community-Assessment-Penington-Institute

Family relationshipsMethamphetamine use by children, siblings or parents can be damaging to families, impacting oninternal and external family relationships. While sometimes challenging, maintaining internalrelationships is important, as families can support the individual to make safer choices about theirmethamphetamine use [34]. US research also indicates that connectedness to family is a protectivefactor against drug use among young people [63].External relationships are also important in assisting families to deal with methamphetamine use.Research with Australian families found that families with children using drugs felt a lack of supportfrom the wider community [64]. This can result in isolation and exclusion of people usingmethamphetamine and their families at a time when they are at their most vulnerable and in mostneed.Families are also at risk when a parent uses methamphetamine. Most obviously, children areparticularly vulnerable in this situation. Drug intoxication and withdrawal can result in reduced abilityto care for children and engagement in the illicit drug market can expose children to violence andillegal activities [65]. Psychological effects associated with the use of methamphetamine such asdepression, anxiety and psychosis are not conducive to good parenting and may impact on thewellbeing of children. Importantly, parental illicit drug use is often part of a more complex picture ofdisadvantage, including poverty, and social isolation [65]. This suggests that a multifaceted approachto parental drug use is required.TreatmentAustralian researchers have written that “specialised treatment options for methamphetamine use inAustralia are scarce, a picture that is not dissimilar to most other parts of the world” [66]. Further,writing in “Principles of Addiction”, McKetin and colleagues have stated that “despite the extent ofmethamphetamine use, and resulting harms, no specialized treatment options for this drug have beenproved to be effective” [4]. There are various form of non-specialist treatment available formethamphetamine use, including counselling, outpatient and inpatient detoxification and residentialrehabilitation.National treatment data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare provide an indication oflevels of treatment seeking for methamphetamine use. Treatment is measured by completed episodesof care, so does not measure cases were people start but do not finish treatment. Recent dataindicate that amphetamines (including methamphetamine) were the fourth most common principaldrug of concern for which treatment was sought in 2010–11 (nine per cent of episodes). This is aslight increase compared with 2009–10 (seven per cent) [17]. However, consistent with research thatfinds methamphetamine is typically used concurrently with other drugs [66] when amphetamine usereported in treatment episodes for other principal drugs of concern was included, 19 per cent of alltreatment episodes during 2010-2011 involved amphetamines. Similar to previous years, counsellingwas the most common main treatment type, with about half (48 per cent) of episodes whereamphetamines were the principal drug of concern reporting this treatment [17].Treatment outcomes for methamphetamine use have been found to be time-limited, in that thebenefits are apparent only during the individual’s time in treatment [67]. These findings highlight thechronic relapsing nature of methamphetamine dependence and the need for a treatment approachwith a more sustained impact [67].18