The Nida Drug Abuse Screener

Substance Disorder

There are a number of different instruments that are used to diagnose substance disorders. One of these NIAMED, which has an online screening tool, the NIDA Drug Screening Tool. This test is used for screening. The patient is surveyed with respect to his/her use of various drugs, both illegal and prescription, with the focus on non-FDA approved uses of the latter. The tool was launched in 2009 as an aid to help physicians quickly and easily screen their patients for drug abuse risk (NIAMED, 2009).

This test is typically administered online, but it can be administered in offline format. The test is a survey. The results are provided at the end of the survey when the test is administered online. The test is one of the more basic tests, in that it is a single source, single method test that only focuses on frequency of usage and on determining the level of problem that the substance use poses. The outcome is an assessment of risk from none to high.

The test is typically used for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is easy. As a basic screener that can be completed in a couple of minutes, a physician can administer this test with just about any patient. Furthermore, the test does not require any training on the part of the physician, so the ease of use and the speed at which it can be administered are two of its best attributes. Further, the test produces the result, so the physician does not need to interpret the test -- that is done by the application. The physician is only directed to resources that can help with steering the patient towards effective care in case of addiction risk.

As a screening test, the NIDA Drug Screening Test is used to identify the risk level that a patient has with respect to different substances. The risk is assessed on the basis of several indicators. First, there is the frequency with which the substance is used. Then there is the degree to which the substance has impacted negatively the person's life, in terms of causing them to be unable to meet work or family obligations. The impact can also include desires to use the substance. The study is interesting is that it does not differentiate too much between the use of prescription drugs for off-label uses -- many classes of drugs both hazardous and not are lumped in together.

There is not a lot of literature discussing the NIDA test. The test is designed for adults, and there is more literature about NIDA's work on tests for adolescents, such as the Adolescent Assessment/Referral Program (Rahdert & Czechowicz, 1995). The test would be used to screen out at-risk patients. Those patients would then be diverted into further treatment if the physician believes it to be warranted. The screening test would not be used any further at that stage, as more advanced testing would be needed to identify a course of treatment. This particular screener is used by primary care physicians to identify when a patient is at risk, but not to assess what treatment the patient might need.