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Integrated and/or multidisciplinary working has become a central guiding principle of addiction treatment throughout the Western world. Indeed, the notion has become virtually synonymous with good practice in intervening in a complex disorder like addiction. There has been surprisingly little analysis or evaluation of the efficacy of this approach. Rather, it is effectively taken for granted that integrated and/or multidisciplinary working is without question a “good thing.” But for complex interventions such as the therapeutic community, it is equally possible that these developments can threaten the underlying principles of the approach. This short literature review considers three areas of integrated working: integrating professional staff into therapeutic community teams; integrating new treatment approaches into existing therapeutic community frameworks; and the issue of therapeutic communities co-working with other treatment services with different philosophies and working practices. The work originated in an evaluative study of a network of Scottish addiction treatment services and the initial findings are that although there are some advantages to broadening the horizons of the therapeutic community movement, there is equally a danger of undermining some core principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Background: Recovery capital refers to the resources people can call upon to initiate and sustain alcohol and drug problem resolution. Measuring this phenomenon could help an individual better understand their strengths as well as gauge the impact of any interventions designed to improve recovery capital and / or reduce addiction severity. This study aimed to test the internal consistency, stability reliability, criterion-related concurrent validity and content validity of the Recovery Capital Questionnaire (RCQ).Setting and Participants: Participants (n = 173) accessing community based addiction treatment (n = 108) and residential treatment (n = 65) in England and Scotland completed the RCQ at two time-points one week apart (n = 102) to test stability reliability, and also completed the RCQ alongside measures of quality of life and resilience (n = 152). Content validity was assessed by seven subject matter experts with content validity ratio and index calculated.Findings: Cronbach's Alpha values (internal consistency) included: social α = 0.52 (0.40-62); physical α = 0.73 (0.66-0.78); human α = 0.85 (0.82-0.88); community α = 0.85 (0.82-0.88); RCQ Total α = 0.88 (0.85-90). RCQ stability reliability (r = 0.89) and ICC (0.88) were calculated. Content Validity Index statistic of 0.91 was calculated. Correlations between relevant domains within the RCQ and WHOQOL Bref were found to include: r = 0.44, 0.59, 0.66 and 0.40. Correlations between RCQ and CD-RISC scores were calculated (r = 0.65).Conclusion: The Recovery Capital Questionnaire was found to possess good overall internal consistency and stability reliability. Content validity was found to be strong and the RCQ demonstrated good concurrent validity with a measure of quality of life and a measure of resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]