Substance use disorders and social functioning from an occupational perspective: a pre and post-study

Introduction: Improvements in the social functioning (SF) of people experiencing substance use disorders (SUD) can occur even without use discontinuation. Occupational Therapy (OT) performs multifaceted work on it. Objective: This study analyzes the SF of people experiencing SUD before and after treatment and the contributions of OT. Method: A pre and post-study before and after starting treatment for SUD in a Psychosocial Care Centre - Alcohol and other Drugs (CAPS-AD) in Brasilia, Brazil - was conducted with 35 clients based on an SF questionnaire. A measure of the participant's SF improvement was defined as the difference between the SF before treatment (SFpre) with the SF after treatment (SFafter). The association between SF and sociodemographic variables/drug/previous treatment was verified by linear regression; all analyses considered a significance level <5%. Results: Most of the 35 participants were male (83%), 30-49 years old (77%), attended elementary school (57%), unemployed (57%), single (46%), Black (40%), had been treated previously (60%) and had present alcohol use disorder (46%). Overall, people undergoing treatment significantly improved their SF. Multivariate analysis showed that Whites improved their SF more (mean of 18.8 +/- 10.4) than Pardos/Blacks (10.8 +/- 8.7; 14.1 +/- 6.4), and the improvement in SF was lower for participants who were taking treatment for the first time (10.3 +/- 5.7) compared with those who had previous treatment (17.2 +/- 9.4). Conclusion: Treatment in CAPS-AD improved the SF of people experiencing SUD, and the OT professional is a key agent in improving SF due to its performance and approach to clients in vulnerable contexts.