Drug Abuse Screening Test

"The Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST) was designed to provide a brief instrument for clinical and non-clinical screening to detect drug abuse or dependence disorders. It is most useful in settings in which seeking treatment for drug use problems is not the patient's stated goal. The DAST provides a quantitative index of the severity of problems related to drug abuse other than alcohol. DAST scores are highly diagnostic with respect to a DSM diagnosis of psychoactive drug dependence. The DAST is available in both 20-item and 10-item formats; an Adolescent version is also available. In addition, the DAST provides a general measure of lifetime problem severity that can be used to guide further inquiry into drug-related problems and to help determine treatment intensity. It takes about 5 minutes to administer the DAST-20 and 2 minutes to score the DAST-10. NOTE re: history and alternate names: The original measure had 28 items and was adapted from the MAST. The 20-item version of the DAST was found to have psychometric properties comparable with the 28-item version, and is now commonly referred to as the DAST, or DAST-20. The DAST is also known as the Drug Use Questionnaire (DUQ) (DUQ-20 and DUQ-10). The DAST-10 was selected in 2012 by a group of researchers from the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) to serve as the recommended assessment tool for use in general medical settings. For more information, see http://ctndisseminationlibrary.org/display/819.htm."