Recent Findings alcohol bulletins: does schools prevention work? Drink Driving course fails; Private Vs public treatment flaws? 'Recovery is the norm' & more

Recent bulletins from the drug and alcohol bank:

Authoritative verdict on ways to prevent adolescent drinking  Reviewers helpfully amalgamate the findings of their three authoritative reviews of alcohol prevention programmes in the school, among families and parents, and combining these and/or other components. Some programmes they say work, but why and in what contexts remains unclear, and the findings give little encouragement to adding non-school based strands to drug and alcohol education programmes.

Drink-driving course unable to cut reoffending  An evaluation of a widely-implemented course for convicted drink-drivers in England and Wales found no evidence that it cut reoffending. The Drink-Impaired Drivers programme involves 14 two-hour sessions for drink-drivers given community sentences, and is accredited by HM Prison Service, but even among offenders who completed it reconviction rates were not significantly reduced.

‘Empathy gap’ in private alcohol treatment, poor NHS systems?  This small English study poses fundamental questions about alcohol treatment services: whether private services suffer from an ‘empathy gap’ and NHS services from poor systems; whether opening up treatment choice to patients with a record of bad decision-making is a good thing; and whether there can be universal criteria for what counts as quality provision.

Recovery is the norm  How common is recovery from dependence and other substance use disorders? Can we realistically hold out not just the possibility but the likelihood of recovery, even to dependent users whose problems are severe enough for specialist treatment? The message of this compendious synthesis of hundreds of studies is that "Recovery is not an aberration achieved by a small and morally enlightened minority ... If there is a natural developmental momentum ... it is toward remission and recovery".

Brief advice may may help with emergency department overload  Screening for risky drinking and offering brief advice can (but not always) reduce later emergency department visits was the main finding of this review, suggesting these programmes might ease pressure on overloaded departments.