Clients can nominate up to 5 additional drugs of concern, these drugs are not necessarily the subject of any treatment within the episode (see technical notes).
In 2020–21, when the client reported additional drugs of concern:
- nicotine and cannabis were the most common additional drugs of concern (10% of episodes each), followed by amphetamines (6.9%) and alcohol (6.1%) (Table ST NSW.7).
Over the period 2011–12 to 2020–21:
- alcohol treatment episodes showed a variance in treatment activity during this time, but remain the top drug of concern, fluctuating from 17,786 to 20,686 over this period; however, the actual proportion of treatment episodes has gradually declined from 47% to 41%, relative to the number of other principal drugs of concern
- amphetamines were the second most common principal drug of concern in 2020–21 and have increased since 2011–12 (from 11% or 4,043 episodes to 23% or 11,474 episodes) (ST NSW.6)
- within the amphetamines group, methamphetamine was reported as the principal drug of concern in almost half (45%) of episodes in 2011–12, rising to 63% in 2017–18 before a considerable increase to 93% in 2020–21 (Figure NSW3a); the rise in episodes may be related to increases in funded treatment services and/or improvement in agency coding practices for methamphetamines (Table ST NSW.6)
- cannabis is now the third most common principal drug of concern, decreasing from 20% to 16% in 2020–21 (ST NSW.6)
- these trends are consistent with the national picture (Table Drg.1).
Treatment
In 2020–21, for treatment episodes in New South Wales:
- counselling was the most common main treatment provided (40% of episodes), followed by withdrawal management, and support and case management (both 14%)
- where an additional treatment was provided as a supplementary to the main treatment, ‘other’ treatment (8.0%) was the most common followed by counselling (6.8%) (Table ST NSW.13). See technical notes for further information on calculating proportions for additional treatment type.
Over the period 2011–12 to 2020–21:
- counselling remained the most common treatment type for all episodes and showed a variance in treatment activity, rising from 31% (11,729 episodes) in 2011–12 to 42% (16,090) in 2016–17, dropping to 40% (20,722) in 2020–21, relative to the other treatment types
- treatment episodes for withdrawal management fluctuated over the 10-year period from 6,933 in 2011–12 peaking in 2017–18 (8,232) before decreasing in 2020–21 (7,450 episodes) (Table ST NSW.13, NSW.15).