Evaluating a Brief Wellness Intervention in a Substance Abuse Recovery Community

The COVID-19 Pandemic had a negative effect on the cognitive and emotional wellness of communities around the world. Specifically, rates of mental health and substance use disorders have increased due to stress and social isolation, and younger adults are particularly vulnerable. To address this issue locally, we collaborated with a community partner that provides residential substance abuse recovery services. Our objective was to determine if an evidence-based, client-centered counseling intervention would improve wellness in a sample of adults recovering from substance abuse. We hypothesized that the intervention would increase the primary outcome of multidimensional wellness, as well as the secondary outcomes of quality of life and solution-building skills and that younger participants would experience greater improvements in wellness.

We recruited participants at a residential recovery program for adults with substance use disorders. Inclusion criteria were ages 18 and up and local residency. Incentives included bus passes and $40 gift cards. We used a one-group pre-test/post-test design. The intervention consisted of a manualized wellness workshop offered in three one-hour in-person groups utilizing Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) techniques. Five topics were addressed, including physical, spiritual, social, cognitive and emotional wellness. To measure our primary wellness outcome, we used the Five Factor-Wellness Inventory (5F-Wel). We used the Solution Building Inventory (SBI) and the World Health Quality of Life (WHO-QOL-BREF) to measure secondary outcomes. T-tests were used to determine if there was a statistically significant difference between the participants’ wellness, quality of life and solution-building capacity. Pearson’s correlation as used to check for an association between age and wellness changes. Multiple regression was used to determine the strongest predictors of multidimensional wellness changes in the sample.

We invited 130 people to participate and (N=97) completed the study. T-test results indicated that the intervention was successful at improving multidimensional (p<.05). Quality of life and solution-building capacity did not significantly improve (p=.11, p=.20). Age was not correlated with wellness changes, r(20)=.05, p>.05. Attending all three sessions(ß=0.18, p=.17), cultural identity (ß=0.16, p=.14) age (ß=0.03, p=.760 and educational level (ß=.10, p=.37) were the strongest predictors of increased multidimensional wellness, but were not significant. The overall model fit was R2=0.07, meaning that 7% of the variance in wellness changes were explained by the included predictors.

We collaborated with our community partner to evaluate a wellness intervention for adults in substance abuse recovery. Our results were similar to previous studies showing improvements in participant wellness. There were no changes in the secondary measures and it was unclear what predicted improved wellness in the sample. Limitations include the large number of people attending each group, and lack of follow-up measures. A qualitative study will explore intervention feasibility in this setting, and a cluster RCT is planned with smaller treatment groups.