An emergency room visit for an illness or injury may seem like a strange time to try to motivate someone to cut back on using drugs.
But a new study suggests that even a half-hour chat with a trained counselor, or a few minutes using a special tablet computer program with a “virtual therapist”, can turn an emergency room trip into the basis for a long-lasting drop in a person’s use of illegal drugs or misuse of prescription medicines.
The findings, from a carefully designed randomized controlled trial involving 780 people at a Flint, Michigan ER who indicated recent drug use on a health survey, suggest that ER visits might serve as effective ‘teachable moments’ for…