E4 - Assessing Heroin Use Disorder Patients

Presentation Introduction: A patient-tailored therapeutic approach in Heroin Use Disorder (HUD) still seems to be in its infancy. The study of patients’ specific psychopathology, craving behaviours and stress reactivity pointed to novel information in making treatment choices and improving outcomes. Indeed, biological features appear to be scarce. We enriched the standard assessment procedure by adding the study of psychopathology, craving behaviours and stress reactivity changes during treatment. After six months of methadone treatment (during the maintenance phase), the psychopathological symptoms can significantly reduce severity, and the psychopathological typology can be relatively stable over time. Craving behaviours can generally improve, but not in some specific cases.
In contrast, stress reactivity can tend to worsen. Multidimensional assessing during AOT suggests that clinicians in the HUD field should take advantage of information deriving from correlations between patients’ clinical characteristics to personalise diagnostic and therapeutic interventions better. Craving behavioural covariates, 5-factor psychopathological dimensions, and stress reaction should be proposed as parameters for patient-tailored therapy.