Completion of treatment

Reasons for clients no longer receiving treatment from an AOD treatment service include expected cessations (for example, treatment program completed), unplanned cessations (for example, the client ceased to participate in the treatment program without notice) and administrative cessation (for example, client transferred to another service provider) (see Key terminology and glossary).

In 2020–21:

  • treatment episodes for a client’s own alcohol or drug use:
    • 3 in 5 (60%) treatment episodes ended as expected (planned) completions
    • around 1 in 5 (21%) of treatment episodes ended due to an unplanned completion
    • 1 in 12 (7.9%) treatment episodes were referred to another service or changed treatment mode, and the remaining 11% of treatment episodes ended for other reasons (Table Ov.7).
  • This pattern differed slightly for clients who received support for someone else’s alcohol or drug use; the proportion of treatment episodes that ended due to unplanned completion was lower (13%) than for a client’s own alcohol or drug use (Figure COMPLETION1) (Table Ov.7).

Figure COMPLETION1: Treatment episodes, by client type and grouped reason for cessation, 2011–12 to 2020–21 (per cent)

The stacked horizontal bar graph shows that most treatment episodes in 2020–21 ended with an expected/planned completion, regardless of client type. Treatment episodes provided to clients for their own drug use were more likely to end with an expected completion than were episodes provided to clients for someone else’s drug use (60.1% compared with 50.9%, respectively). A filter allows the user to view data for different years.

In 2020–21, completion of treatment episodes for a client’s own alcohol or drug use varied by principal drug of concern. For example, episodes of treatment for:

  • nicotine (73%), volatile solvents (72%) and ecstasy (71%) had the highest proportion of treatment episodes ending with an expected cessation
  • morphine (46%) or buprenorphine (50%) as the principal drug of concern had the lowest proportion of episodes for an expected cessation
  • amphetamines had the highest proportion of episodes for unplanned cessations (26%), followed by morphine (25%) and Benzodiazepines (21%) (Table Drg.14) (Figure COMPLETION2).

Figure COMPLETION2: Treatment episodes for selected drugs, by principal drug of concern and reason for cessation, 2014–15 to 2020–21 (per cent)

The stacked horizontal bar chart shows that expected/planned completion was the most common reason for cessation in treatment episodes for all selected principal drugs of concern in 2020–21. The proportion of episodes that ended with an expected completion ranged from 46.1% for morphine as the principal drug of concern to 73.2% for nicotine. A filter allows the user to view data for different years.

Over the 10 years to 2020–21, for a client’s own alcohol or drug use:

  • the proportion of treatment episodes that ended in an expected cessation decreased overall, falling by 5 percentage points to 60% (Table Ov.7)
  • decreases in expected cessation were highest for treatment episodes where the principal drug of concern was ecstasy: (down 18 percentage points to 71%), and amphetamines (down 10 percentage points to 52%), whereas volatile solvents increased over this time (by 16 percentage points) (Table Drg.12).

Over the 10 years to 2020–21, for someone else’s alcohol or drug use:

  • the proportion of treatment episodes with an expected cessation decreased from 2011–12 (71%) to 2018–19 (55%), down to 51% in 2020–21. Whereas ‘other’ as a reason for ceasing treatment increased from 13% in 2011–12 to 30% in 2020–21 (Table Ov.7).