Summary
In the Northern Territory in 2009–10, 20 government-funded alcohol and other drug treatment agencies provided 3,798 treatment episodes. This represented one less treatment agency and around 40 extra treatment episodes compared with 2008–09.
The median1 age of persons receiving treatment for their own drug use was 31 years. The median age of people seeking assistance in relation to someone else’s drug in 2009–10 was 26 years.
Alcohol accounted for 69% of treatment episodes in 2009–10, followed by cannabis (9%) and opioids (9%, with morphine accounting for 8% of all principal drugs of concern).
The most common form of main treatment provided was assessment only (39% of episodes), followed by counselling (21%), and rehabilitation (16%). The proportion of clients receiving withdrawal management (detoxification) as their main treatment decreased in 2009–10 (from 15% of episodes in 2008–09 to 7% in 2009–10); while assessment only increased by six percentage points (from 33% in 2008–09 to 39%).
1 The median is the midpoint of a list of observations ranked from the smallest to the largest.