From Addiction to Employment.

Overview

Patients with substance use disorders have low employment rates and are to a large extent on the outside of the ordinary labor market. Individual Placement and Support (IPS) is an evidence based method developed to aid persons with severe mental disorders in obtaining ordinary work. IPS has been used clinically in the addiction field, but has been subject to little research. The trial "From addiction to employment" is a randomized controlled trial to investigate the effect of an IPS intervention on employment outcome among substance use disorder patients in specialized health care treatment in Oslo, Norway. The study is conducted at the Department for Substance Use Disorder Treatment at Oslo University Hospital. The trial begins to include patients March 1st 2020 and will include for two years, until February 28th 2022.

The target population in this project is patients in SUD treatment who wish to gain employment. The goal of the study is to determine the effectiveness of IPS in helping persons with SUD obtain ordinary employment. A pragmatic, two-arm, parallel, superiority, randomized controlled trial will be conducted. The project is financed through innovation funding from the South Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority, the Norwegian Directorate of Health and internal resources from OUS. Participants will be allocated randomly to either an employment specialist whom they will have individual contact with for the coming 13 months or shorter (intervention), or to a self-help and four-sessions work shop intervention (control comparison). The intervention fidelity will be assessed by external evaluators according to the Norwegian translation of the IPS Fidelity Scale. Patients will be recruited to the study over a period of two years, and followed for 18 months my data collection and up until 10 years in national registries.