Blog: Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

You may remember Olivia from our our national Reclaiming Futures video, made several years ago: she'd just graduated from juvenile drug court in King County, WA, where she benefited from the Reclaiming Futures initiative in Seattle-King County. She also  had a great mentor in Hazel Cameron, who directs The 4C Coalition in Seattle, which provides mentors to youth in the juvenile justice system. 
How's Olivia doing these days? Take a look at the video above, in which Olivia, now 22, gives a speech to a packed room at the Joint Meeting on Adolescent Treatment Effectiveness (JMATE) in Baltimore, MD, on December 14, 2010.
Olivia's story is just under 20 minutes long, but it seems to fly by -- she tells her story with poise, humility, humor, and gratitude. Check it out! 
Update January 12, 2011 - I forgot to mention it, but this post is just in time for National Mentoring Month!
 

As of the mid-2000s, the research on the effectiveness of juvenile drug courts was unclear. Now, that's starting to change. In coming weeks, I'll post about new research from John Roman at the Urban Institute about what works and how juvenile drug courts should adjust their practices to be more effective.
 
Juvenile Drug Courts - How Do They Compare to Outpatient Treatment?

Today, I want to share with you a new quasi-experimental study I saw mentioned at JMATE 2010 that compares 1,120 youth in juvenile drug courts in multiple jurisdictions with 1,120 youth not in juvenile drug court, but who particiated in adolescent outpatient treatment. The goal was to see how the two groups differed in terms of services and in their treatment outcomes.
Bottom line? Juvenile drug courts appeared to do a better job (compared to treatment alone) of helping youth reduce symptoms of their emotional problems and cut their substance use, as measured six months post-intake. (This doesn't mean, of course, that every teen who needs drug or alcohol treatment should be in juvenile drug court--!) In general, youth in juvenile drug courts received -- unsurprisingly -- more family services, more wrap-around support, more urine tests, and more supervision.

We're sponsoring a free one-hour webinar, “Investing in Reclaiming Futures,” on January 20, 2011 at 10:30 am PST / 1:30 pm EST. It's designed specifically for public agencies, policymakers, and foundations wanting to learn more about the Reclaiming Futures model and how the model has been adopted as a cost-effective juvenile justice reform initiative. 
The webinar will:

1. review the need for system improvement for young people involved with juvenile justice and substance abuse;
2. describe the Reclaiming Futures model;
3. describe a statewide framework for Reclaiming Futures, and
4. discuss the role of public policy makers and foundations in adopting Reclaiming Futures as a framework at the state level. 

• Substance Use and Delinquent Behavior Among Serious Adolescent Offenders - a new bulletin from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) discussing findings from the landmark Pathways to Desistance research. One of the few things that works to reduce recidivism in this population? Family-focused substance abuse treatment.
• What the heck is "parity," anyway? - the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) gives a quick overview of one of the key recent legislative shifts affecting adolescent substance abuse treatment. (Hat tip to SAMHSA.)

Nine million of America's teens and young adults are struggling with drugs and alcohol¹, yet unlike most other adolescent health issues or diseases, parents have not found a concise path to resources and support for teen drug and alcohol addiction. A new science-based resource called Time To Get Help from The Partnership at Drugfree.org was just released in beta form to begin helping meet these needs.
Resources within Time To Get Help include:

• Learn: Intervention and Treatment e-books for download
• Make a Plan: worksheets and checklists
• Helping Hand Questions & Answers: contributions fromexperts in the field
• Words of Hope: a forum where people can post short Twitter-like messages
• Share Your Story and Journals: to tell stories, track experiences and progress

I just got back from the 2010 Joint Meeting on Adolescent Treatment Effectiveness (JMATE) in Baltimore. I, along with other guest bloggers, will be passing on what was shared in the coming weeks. To start off, here's something Dr. Michael Dennis reminded me of while I was at the conference: Chestnut Health Systems has posted a ton of evidence-based, tested clinical protocols for treating adolescent substance abuse, all available for free download. 
Most treatment providers are aware of the Cannabis Youth Treatment (CYT) manuals:

• MET/CBT-5
• MET/CBT-7
• Family Support Network (FSN)
• Adolescent Community Reinforcement Approach (ACRA)
• Multi-Dimensional Family Therapy (MDFT) for Cannabis Users

>>Download them here.
Fewer are aware of the "Adolescent Treatment Models" research funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) that followed on the heels of the CYT research. The basic idea was to see whether home-grown programs (vs. models created external to a specific agency) were more effective than "treatment as usual."

• Growth in Corrections Spending 1987-2007 Dwarfed Spending on Higher Ed (see image at right) - Curious about where your state stands? Follow the link and check the graph.  It would be interesting to see the same data comparing spending on the juvenile justice system with middle- and high-school spending.  (Hat tip to Jim Carlton.) 
• Gay Teens Are Punished More Heavily in School and in Juvenile Court - From The New York Times: A national study of 15,000 middle school and high school teens published in Pediatrics found that gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens are more likely to be expelled from school than their straight peers, and more likely to be stopped, arrested, and adjudicated.  And "it's not because they're misbehaving more," says the study's lead author, Kathryn Himmelstein. (Hat tip to Dan Merrigan.)

• From Teen Carjacker to Poetry Professor - R. Dwayne Betts was imprisoned for nine years at age 16 for participating in a carjacking. Now 30 -- and a free man -- he's published a memoir, is working on a nonfiction book on the effects of incarceration, and is a professor of poetry at the University of Maryland. He's also a spokesman for the Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ). Follow the link for a fascinating interview with him conducted by a blogger at The New Yorker magazine, and see this related post for information about how poetry can be therapeutic to teens in the juvenile justice system.

[The following is reposted with permission of the author and its original publisher, Phoenix House. While not specifically about youth, its conclusions apply to older teens.
Do you run a vocational program for youth in treatment and/or in the justice system? Have thoughts about the role of employment for youth in recovery?  Let us know - leave a comment or drop me an email. --Ed.]
 
I recently came across “Help Wanted: One Second-Chance Job,” by Jim Arkedis, which appeared in the Washington Post, November 12, 2010. 
In the article, Jim tells the story of his mentee, Tim Cofield. Tim is 55 years old, bipolar-schizophrenic, battling substance abuse, rotating in and out of jail, and unable to acquire what Jim deems the most important stepping stone in Tim’s recovery: a job.