NM ASSIST
ValidatedNIDA Quick Screen and NIDA-Modified ASSIST (NM ASSIST)
Adults (18+)Clinician, Self~8 min75 questions
Patients may fill in the form themselves, but screening personnel should offer to read the questions aloud in a private setting. Prescription medications are recorded only if taken for reasons or in doses other than prescribed. Follow-up questions appear only for the drugs the patient reports.
Report details · optional
Shown on the report and stored with the screening record. Use initials or a code, not full names.
Answers, results and report details are recorded by OpenScreener to monitor and improve the service. Privacy
About this screener — evidence, source
The NIDA Quick Screen asks about past-year heavy drinking, tobacco, non-medical prescription drug and illegal drug use. Any drug use opens the NIDA-Modified ASSIST: lifetime use of ten drug classes, then for each drug ever used the past-3-month frequency, craving, problems, failure to meet obligations, concern from others and failed attempts to cut down, plus injection use. Questions 2–7 give a Substance Involvement (SI) score per drug with lower, moderate or high risk.
Evidence · provisional
The NM ASSIST keeps the WHO ASSIST v3.0 questions and its illicit-drug risk thresholds (0–3 lower, 4–26 moderate, 27+ high). The WHO ASSIST was validated in 1,047 drug-treatment and primary-care participants in seven countries, with concurrent validity against the ASI-Lite, SDS, AUDIT and DAST and ROC-derived cut-offs with sensitivities of 54–97% and specificities of 50–96% for most substances (Humeniuk et al., Addiction 2008;103:1039–1047). NIDA's modified version has not been separately validated.
Source & licence
National Institute on Drug Abuse. NIDA Quick Screen V1.0 and NIDA-Modified ASSIST V2.0 (Resource Guide: Screening for Drug Use in General Medical Settings; NIH Publication No. 11-7384, revised 2012). The Quick Screen was adapted from Smith PC et al., A single-question screening test for drug use in primary care, Arch Intern Med. 2010;170(13):1155–1160, and NIAAA's heavy-drinking-days question; the NM ASSIST was adapted from the WHO ASSIST Version 3.0.
Licence: Public domain — NIDA's Quick Reference Guide "Screening for Drug Use in General Medical Settings" (NIH Pub. No. 11-7384), which contains the NIDA Quick Screen and NIDA-Modified ASSIST, states "This pamphlet is in the public domain and may be reproduced."
Wording, item scores and the SI risk table from the NIDA Quick Screen V1.0 / NM ASSIST V2.0 form (https://nida.nih.gov/nidamed/screening/nmassist.pdf). The form's placeholder "(first drug, second drug, etc)" is replaced by the name of each drug the patient reports. The free-text name for "Other" drugs is not recorded.
Official source ↗