Increasing Patient Knowledge of the Signs of Opioid Overdose and Naloxone in a Suburban Treatment Program

The outpatient Addiction Services program at Linden Oaks will begin implementing an educational program on the signs of opioid overdose and naloxone for all patients who have a diagnosis of opiate dependence in the investigators suburban treatment program. Subjects will be recruited from that population and administered a new, empirically validated scale (i.e. the Opiate Overdose Knowledge Scale; OOKS) both pre- and post-intervention to measure the effect that the educational program has on patient knowledge.

Patients will also be surveyed (i.e. History Survey) about their experiences over the previous 12-months (e.g. exposure to opiate overdoses, access/use of naloxone) prior to treatment; and, this History Survey will then be re-administered by phone, 1-3 months after discharge. The aim is to measure whether education influences patient behavior. Finally, all subjects will be administered an empirically-validated measure to assess subject shame and guilt (i.e. Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale; GASP), and response patterns in their behavior, to evaluate whether shame and guilt predict behavior at follow-up. The investigators will compare to data (i.e. OOKS, GASP, and History Survey) from a historical control group prior to the implementation of the educational program - and, also at 1-3 month follow-up.