Effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in preventing HIV risk behaviour in injecting drug users

Evidence for the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in reducing the risk of infection with HIV of injecting drug users and competing hypotheses for the pattern of results suggests that participating in evaluation research may itself be a valuable intervention.

Abstract

A close examination of the evidence and competing hypotheses for the pattern of results suggests that participating in evaluation research may itself be a valuable intervention. Implications for the development of interventions include the potential efficacy of health risk assessment. Implications for evaluation of interventions include the need for developing unobtrusive measures and for assessing the impact of behavioural assessments. Despite the large behavioural changes reported in most of the studies, a substantial proportion of subjects receiving interventions reported unacceptably high levels of risk behaviours. New, more potent interventions are needed, such as those designed to change the norms of entire communities of drug users concerning safer injection and safer sex.