2023-05-04
National Audit Office: treatment for addictive diseases should be better accessible than the source of addiction
To be effective, treatment services for people with addiction diseases need to be organised closer to them - especially for children and young people. This is according to the auditors of the National Audit Office who carried out the audit "Organisation of treatment services for people with addiction diseases".
"Untreated addictions create social and psychological problems not only for the person with the disease, but also for the person's immediate environment, which also needs help. Drug users die younger as a result of poisoning, infectious diseases, violence and suicide, and alcohol addiction is no less damaging to a person's physical and mental health," says Kristina Vaivadienė, Audit Team Leader.
According to the auditors, 43% of medical institutions entitled to provide addiction treatment services did not provide services funded by the Compulsory Health Insurance Fund (CHIF) between 2019 and 2022. 38% of the surveyed institutions reported that they do not provide treatment services for mental or behavioural disorders due to a lack of specialists. 45% of the population who sought help for addiction experienced difficulties in accessing it because such services are not available where they live.
In 2019-2022, only the Republican Centre for Addiction Diseases provided psychosocial rehabilitation services for adults under the Minnesota programme. From the end of 2021 onwards, other medical institutions were financially able to provide these services from the CHIF, but did not do so. In addition, during this period only the Centre provided psychosocial rehabilitation services for children and young people in Vilnius and Kaunas.
Addictions affect not only the people who have them, but also the people around them. According to the data of the National Health Insurance Fund, 57 medical institutions provided addiction counselling to family members of people suffering from addiction between 2019 and 2022, with an average of 78 services per year for 48 people. The need for such counselling is much higher: the Republican Centre for Addiction Diseases provided 3,696 counselling services to relatives of persons treated at the Republican Centre for Addiction Diseases, which were not recorded in the Compulsory Health Insurance Information System.
The implementation of the National Audit Office's recommendations will increase the availability of addiction treatment services: all 10 counties will offer motivational therapy and the Minnesota programme services, as well as addiction treatment services for children and young people.