Nutrition Care Processes Can Improve the Nutritional Status and Quality of Life of Persons Who Use Drugs

Background:: Addiction affects the economy of countries worldwide. Nutrition plays an important role in helping persons who use drugs (PWUDs) to regain their physical and mental health, thereby increasing the probability of recovery. Objectives:: This study aimed to evaluate the effects of implementing the nutrition care process on PWUDs management 120 days after its implementation. Patients and Methods:: Following a quasi-experimental design with pre and post-test evaluations, 268 PWUDs admitted to 8 drug treatment, and rehabilitation centers in the Philippines were recruited. Developed nutrition management guidelines containing the nutrition care process and cycle menu of calculated diet for PWUDs were provided for implementation in the rehabilitation regimen. Body mass index was used to assess nutritional status, dietary diversity score (DDS) to measure diet quality, WHO quality of life-BREF to assess the quality of life (QoL), Kessler-10 Psychological Distress Scale to determine psychological distress, and Beck’s depression inventory to assess stress level. All descriptive analyses were performed using STATA version 13. Repeated measures ANOVA, Cochran’s Q test, and Kendall’s tau coefficient were performed using SPSS-20. Results:: The results indicated a 92% reduction in underweight during the study period. Participants with high DDS significantly increased from 38.43 to 91.04%. All domains of the QoL were improved, the level of severe depression was significantly decreased (6.72 to 4.48%), and decrease in the proportion of participants experiencing moderate (18.3 to 12.7%) and severe psychological distress (4.48 to 3.73%) was observed. There was no significant association between DDS and the three psychological parameters. Conclusions:: The implementation of the nutrition care process and the recovery diets is feasible and could improve the nutritional status, QoL, and stress level of PWUDs.