THE NATIONAL-INSTITUTE-ON DRUG-ABUSE COLLABORATIVE COCAINE TREATMENT STUDY - RATIONALE AND METHODS

The National Institute on Drug Abuse Collaborative Cocaine Treatment S tudy is a large, multisite psychotherapy clinical trial for outpatient s who meet the DSM-IV criteria for cocaine dependence. For 480 randomi zed patients, the outcomes of 4 treatments are compared for an 18-mont h period. All treatments include group drug counseling. One treatment also adds cognitive therapy, one adds supportive-expressive psychodyna mic therapy, and one adds individual drug counseling; one consists of group drug counseling alone. In addition, 2 specific interaction hypot heses, one involving psychiatric severity and the other involving degr ee of antisocial personality characteristics, are being tested. This a rticle describes the main aims of the project, the background and rati onale for the study design, the rationale for the choice of treatments and patient population, and a brief description of the research plan.