Followup Study of Narcotic Drug Addicts after Hospitalization

Abstract

STUDIES have attempted to evalu¬ ate systematically the status of patients at varying lengths of time after hospital treat¬ ment for drug addiction (1-3).These have been based either upon a questionnaire sent to discharged patients or upon the records of pa¬ tients readmitted to a Federal narcotic treat¬ ment hospital.In a recent study (4) the major source of the information was a team of 4 parole officers who supervised 346 former ad¬ dicts on parole from New York State correc¬ tional institutions.In the present study the data were gathered by a field team which attempted to make con¬ tact with all addict patients discharged from the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital at Lexington, Ky., during the period from