Sunday, 16 January 2005 - 10:15 AM

This presentation is part of: Interventions for Adolescent Drug Abuse: Individual, Group, Family and Community Approaches

Group Treatment of Adolescents with MET/CBT-5

The Georgetown University Adolescent Health Program is a brief, manualized substance abuse treatment program for DC area adolescents. The program uses a treatment called Motivational Enhancement Therapy/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy-5 (MET/CBT-5). The program consists of comprehensive evaluation, 2 individual and 3 group sessions and 3 follow-up meetings over 12 months after treatment. Parents attend four hours of family support meetings as a part of the program. MET/CBT-5 is based on the premise that people are most likely to change when the motivation comes from themselves, rather than being imposed by an adult, parent or therapist. In a randomized national study of 600 adolescents in outpatient substance abuse treatment, the MET/CBT-5 treatment program demonstrated very positive overall effects as the briefest form of treatment in the study. Compared with treatments that were more than twice as long, MET/CBT-5 had higher rates of abstinence and recovery. The study also found a 50% decrease in problems at 3 months and 25% reduction at 6 months after intake. Finaly, Some data to suggest that the positive results lasted for more than two years. Preliminary demographic data show a mean age of 15.8 for participants and 83 percent are male. Racial distribution is as follows 42% African American, 33 % White, 17% Hispanic, and 8% Asian. Approxiamately 1/3 of the participants are referred from the Health Service sector, with 25% coming from the Judicial system, 17% from social services and the remainder coming from parental or guardian referrals. Approximately 2/3 are Washington DC residents with the remainder evenly divided between Virginia and Maryland. Primary substances of abuse for this sample is marijuana (75%) and alcohol (25%). Regarding substance abuse diagnoses, 70% of the sample meet criteria for a Substance abuse disorder, NOS, with the remainder being cannabis dependent, Rule Out disorders, and none reported. This sample has multiple co-occuring psychiatric disorders besides a substance abuse disorder, with 40% meeting criteria for 2 disorders, 30% having 3 disorders, and 10% with 4 disorders. The majority, 70% of the sample, have no history of substance abuse treatment. We will employ both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, in order to illuminate the social ecology of urban adolescent substance abuse. Our primary research questions are (1) What are the effects of the MET/CBT-5 (brief treatment with family support component) on the lives of participating urban adolescents? (2) What are the effects and experience of treatment from the teens’ perspective? (3) What is the relationship between teens’ substance use, social networks, mental health, and environment settings? The assessments will provide an opportunity to gauge whether the treatment has both immediate and longer-term effects as we follow the teens for 12 months post treatment. Our primary quantitative outcome measures are substance use, health, risk behaviors, mental health, environment, legal, and vocational/educational. We are measuring social network quality and structure, environmental/geographical parameters, parent-teen communication, family topology. Our qualitative measures through Case Study approaches and interviews will be self-narrative development, phenomenology of treatment, and subjective experiences of daily urban life and its effects on outcomes.

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