Sunday, 16 January 2005 - 10:15 AM

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

Strengths-Oriented Family Therapy for Adolescent Substance Abuse

Objective: The Iowa Strengthening Communities for Youth (SCY) project is a 5-year collaborative project funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA; TI13354) to expand and enhance adolescent substance abuse treatment. This presentation reports on the rationale, study design and preliminary outcomes for our 5-year project. The 3-month outcomes for all clients to date are presented in this report.

Method: Adolescents were assessed using the Global Assessment of Individual Needs (GAIN), a widely used semi-structured assessment. Families who were eligible for outpatient treatment were invited to participate in our research study and, if they consented, were randomly assigned to two treatment conditions, Strengths Oriented Family Therapy (SOFT) or the Seven Challenges Program (group based). Participants were interviewed again at 3, 6, 9, and 12-month follow-up points after they entered the study. Participants for this initial study are clients recruited into our study between June 2003 and January 2004 and for whom 3-month follow data were available (N=28). Outcome variables reported on in this preliminary analysis include past 90 day marijuana use, past 90 day alcohol use, past 90 day trouble with one’s family, and number of arrests in the past 90 days. Overall results were obtained by using paired samples t-tests to determine if statistically significant improvement was observed from the baseline assessment to the 3-month follow up interview. Between-group analyses using independent samples t-tests for both baseline and 3-month follow up data were also conducted.

Results: For the last 90 days before intake, participants in our study, on average, reported that they used marijuana on 20.6 days, drank alcohol 4.6 days, were bothered by psychiatric problems on 22 days, were arrested 0.33 times, and were in trouble with their families on 20.3 days. Across conditions improvements were found on all outcome variables at 3-months, but only the difference in the number of days of marijuana use was statistically significant. Although participants on average reported using marijuana on 20.6 days out of the past 90 days at baseline, they reported using 5.4 days out of the past 90 days at the 3-month follow up (i.e., 74% on average reduction). At baseline, no between group differences existed on any of these outcome variables, but there was a trend toward significance for the number of days of psychiatric problems. No significant between-group differences existed at the 3-month follow up, but participants in the SOFT condition reported less severity on all measures.

Conclusion: These analyses should be viewed with caution due to the low power associated with these preliminary cases. If these findings remain stable, as more data are available, they would indicate that the family therapy was more effective. Additional findings are discussed within the debate about the comparative effectiveness of family treatment, group treatment and individual treatment.

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