Anxiety and Its Influencing Factors in Methadone Maintenance Treatment Users

Abstract Background: Anxiety, a major factor that affects the therapeutic effect and dropout rate of methadone maintenance treatment, has a high prevalence among MMT users. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of anxiety in MMT users and explore the main influencing factors of anxiety of methadone maintenance treatment users.Methods: 177 methadone maintenance treatment users in Guangzhou, China were evaluated. The socio-demographic, duration and MMT-related characteristics were documented. Anxiety, quality of life and sleep quality were evaluated by Beck Anxiety inventory (BAI), the Quality of Life-Drug Addiction (QOL-DA) and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) respectively. The correlation between different factors and BAI score was also analyzed.Results: The BAI total score, QOL-DA score, PSQI score were 7.1±8.2, 163.5±21.4, 6.0±4.0 respectively. 30.5% of the subjects showed mild to severe anxiety. Treatment interruption, QOL-DA score and PSQI score had strong correlations with the score of BAI, with correlation coefficients of 0.17, -0.08 and 0.50 respectively.Conclusions: Anxiety symptoms were commonly presented in MMT users. Treatment interruption, quality of life and sleep quality are the major factors affecting anxiety of MMT users.