Background: Psychosocial combined with methadone maintenance treatment aimed at opioid use disorder is effective, but the efficacy of the psychosocial intervention in such treatment is questionable.
Objectives: This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of psychosocial plus methadone maintenance treatment versus methadone maintenance treatment alone for opioid use disorder in improving treatment retention and reducing drug use.
Methods: An exhaustive literature search was conducted in PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, PsycINFO, CINAHL, China National Knowledge Infrastructure database, "the Wan Fang database, the VIP database, and the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database", and randomized controlled trials were identified from their inception to February 2021.
Results: Twenty-four studies were included. The results of this meta-analysis showed that adding any psychosocial treatment to standard methadone maintenance treatment significantly improved the illicit drug use during the treatment relative risk (RR) 0.62 (95% CI 0.48 to 0.79), and retention in treatment RR 1.18 (95% CI 1.11 to 1.25). No statistically significant additional benefit was detected in terms of retention at follow-up RR 1.08 (95% CI 0.95 to 1.22).
Conclusions: The present evidence suggests that adding psychosocial intervention to methadone maintenance treatment significantly improves the nonuse of opioids and retention in treatment. It should be noted that psychosocial treatment is only beneficial for methadone treatment when methadone is provided in subtherapeutic doses. Additionally, the finding about the improvement effect of retention at follow-up did not achieve statistical significance. Due to the diversity of outcome indicators in relevant original studies, the included studies are limited.
Keywords: methadone maintenance therapy; opioid use disorder; psychosocial intervention.