Teen Drug Treatment Subject Of Guide For Parents
For the thousands of parents who come to grips with teenage substance abuse in their own families each year, help is now available through a new guide for drug treatment programs for teens.
Treating Teens: A Guide to Adolescent Drug Programs, published by Drug Strategies, a non-profit research institute, brings together current research and clinical practice in the area of adolescent drug treatment to provide helpful and clear guidance for parents, counselors and others struggling to help a teenager overcome addiction.
Treating Teens was developed with guidance from an advisory panel of 22 nationally-recognized experts, including leading academics, clinical researchers, treatment providers and adolescent development specialists and was supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Drug Strategies, a non-profit research institute, has published the first-ever comprehensive guide to drug treatment programs for teens. Treating Teens: A Guide to Adolescent Drug Programs brings together current research and clinical practice in the area of adolescent drug treatment to provide helpful and clear guidance for parents, counselors and others struggling to help a teenager overcome addiction.
Treating Teens was developed with guidance from an advisory panel of 22 nationally-recognized experts, including leading academics, clinical researchers, treatment providers and adolescent development specialists and was supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Treating Teens looks at drug abuse in the context of adolescent development and provides a framework for understanding what has been learned about effective adolescent drug treatment over the last decade.
The guide, which underscores the need to address developmental issues when treating adolescents, provides concrete ways to assess treatment programs, including the key elements of effective adolescent drug treatment and questions to ask of treatment providers. It also includes hotline numbers and website addresses for finding treatment in each state and definitions of frequently used treatment terms.
“Establishing that a teenager has a drug problem can throw an entire family into crisis,” said Mathea Falco, President of Drug Strategies. “That’s the time when the family needs good information and needs it quickly. Treating Teens provides clear and concise information and guidance that is supported by research and clinical evidence.”
“Even among teens and young adults who know they need substance abuse treatment nearly 50 percent do not receive it,” said Charles G. Curie, Administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Without question, we must better identify, diagnose and refer those teens in need of care. This important guide to treatment services can help families help their children toward lives free of drugs and full of opportunity.”
According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse more than one million young people between the ages of 12 and 17 need treatment for substance abuse, but only one in ten is in treatment. Unfortunately, even those teens who are in drug treatment programs may not be in programs that address their particular needs.
According to Treating Teens, the nine elements that are crucial to effective adolescent drug treatment are:
1. Assessment and treatment matching that includes screening to determine a client’s problem areas and assessing the teen and her or his family to determine whether the adolescent’s needs match the services available at a particular program and the intensity of treatment offered.
2. A comprehensive, integrated treatment approach to ensure that the program addresses all of an individual teen’s treatment needs, which may include mental health problems, family dysfunction, learning disabilities or school failure and physical health concerns; in addition, this approach should connect adolescents and their families with an array of community services.
3. Family involvement in treatment to engage parents or a caregiver in the treatment process to help ensure that the teenager stays in treatment and continues to improve after the formal treatment program has ended.
4. A developmentally appropriate program to address the biological, behavioral and cognitive changes teenagers go through and the impact those changes have on substance abuse.
5. A way to engage and retain teens in treatment by developing a climate of trust, confidence and acceptance between the teen and the counselor, and a program that is relevant to teenagers and their needs and interests.
6. Qualified staff who have training and experience in diverse areas, such as adolescent development, delinquency, depression, anxiety or attention deficit disorder. A low staff to client ratio can also improve treatment outcomes.
7. Staff with gender and cultural competence who understand the needs of and issues facing clients who are female, gay, and/or people of color and can develop a trusting relationship with those clients.
8. A process of continuing care that includes relapse prevention training, follow-up plans, referrals to community resources and periodic check-ups after completing treatment to help teens avoid recidivism.
9. Evidence-based treatment outcomes that are measured by evaluations of the program.
“Teenagers are not just younger versions of adults and they can’t be treated as such,” said Dr. Robert Millman, Chair of the Treating Teens Advisory Panel. He is also Chair of Drug Strategies, as well as Chief of the Division of Community and Public Health Programs at Weill Medical College, Cornell University. “To be effective, drug treatment programs for teens have to address adolescent development and family issues, which play an enormous role in the lives of young people and have an impact on their drug use and recovery.”
The guide lists 144 exemplary programs around the country. A complete profile of each program, including how it incorporates the key elements of effective treatment, is available on Drug Strategies’ companion Web site at www.drugstrategies.org.
Treating Teens also highlights and takes an in-depth look at seven promising programs that reflect a variety of treatment approaches, from the Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions in Albany, Oregon, to the Multidimensional Family Therapy program in Miami, Florida.
The guide’s authors solicited recommendations from Advisory Panel members, leading national organizations, and all 50 state alcohol and drug abuse agency directors for exemplary programs to include in Treating Teens. Treating Teens also provides information about teen drug treatment in the juvenile justice system, through which most teenagers are referred to treatment. It also discusses treatment of substance abuse and mental health problems, which co-occur in two-thirds of adolescents in drug treatment.
“We are proud to support the publication of a guide that is so important and so clearly needed,” said Constance Pechura, Senior Program Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “It is our hope that Treating Teens will not only help more teenagers get treatment, but that it will also encourage more drug treatment programs to expand their services to adolescents.”
Treating Teens: A Guide to Adolescent Drug Programs is available from Drug Strategies for $16.95. It can be ordered online at http://www.drugstrategies.org or by sending a check to Drug Strategies, 1150 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 800, Washington, D.C. 20036.
Drug Strategies, a non-profit research institute, promotes more effective approaches to the nation’s drug problems and supports initiatives to reduce the demand for drugs through prevention, education, treatment and law enforcement.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, based in Princeton, N.J., is the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care. It concentrates its grantmaking in four goal areas: to assure that all Americans have access to basic health care at reasonable cost; to improve care and support for people with chronic health conditions; to promote healthy communities and lifestyles; and to reduce the personal, social and economic harm caused by substance abuse–tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs.
