• Fredrik D Moe and Henrik Berg.
• Department of Social Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway.
• J Eval Clin Pract. 2022 Oct 1; 28 (5): 721728721-728.

BackgroundSubstance use disorder (SUD) is often understood as a chronic illness.AimsThis paper investigates whether SUD is treated as a chronic illness.MethodTo this aim, we have used World Health Organizations (WHO's) definition of chronic illness to conduct a comparative analysis of SUD and type 2 diabetes (T2D), which is another chronic illness.ResultsWhen analysing Norwegian treatment guidelines, we found that only the T2D guideline reflects the WHO's conceptualization of chronic illnesses. We argue that this discrepancy implies that SUD is understood as a moral and legal problem, while T2D is conceptualized as a somatic illness. We discuss how social, political and historical conditions of the possibility for understanding SUD are interwoven with normative presumptions about the clinician, patient, treatment guidelines and drug policies in a way that may impede the development of continuing care.ConclusionThe paper concludes that the delivery of treatment services is inequitable as SUD is not treated as a chronic illness.© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

11 keywords...

hide…