Edinburgh Napier University

  Behavioural Couples Therapy (BCT) is a psychosocial intervention for the treatment of alcohol and drug problems; recommended by NICE for discordant couples where one person has an addiction and the other does not. Evidence suggests: BCT can be effective
with patients on opioid substitution therapy (OST); can be implemented with concordant as well as discordant couples and; can improve outcomes for children.
Conducting such a trial in the UK however, raises several feasibility questions, primarily in relation to implementing BCT in the UK drug treatment setting and collecting data on couples and their children. Our feasibility study, which involves implementing BCT with eighteen families, will determine its suitability for a pilot RCT, including an economic evaluation. Our innovative project, which includes the US developer of BCT, will be the first study to examine the implementation of BCT in the UK and only the second worldwide to involve OST patients.