RECRUITMENT INTO TREATMENT OF HOMELESS, MENTALLY-ILL, CHEMICAL ABUSING MEN

Under the assumption that the treatment of substance abuse begins well before substance abusers actually enroll in treatment, this paper con ceptualizes the process or recruitment into treatment, and investigate s attrition of treatment seeking clients during the treatment recruitm ent stage. The paper identifies two stages prior to treatment enrollme nt, treatment exploration and treatment recruitment, and presents the results of a study of 1,924 homeless, mentally ill, chemical abusing m en who looked for community-based treatment in New York City between 1 991 and 1996. Only 326 of these men actually entered treatment. The re st were lost either prior to or during the recruitment stage. The pape r focuses on the 823 men who reached the treatment recruitment stage, and attempts to correlate their sociodemographic, psychological, and s ubstance abuse characteristics with the different types of attrition d uring treatment recruitment The results show that certain client chara cteristics predict rejection and certain other characteristics predict acceptance by the treatment programs.