Blog: Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

Want to plan an event for teens celebrating and promoting recovery from substance abuse? Want ideas from others?
SAMHSA recently released a toolkit to help individuals and organizations plan recovery events in conjunction with Recovery Month 2010, and to provide you with tools and educational materials to distribute in your community.
As we discussed in a previous post, 2010 marks Recovery Month’s 21st year, and we are celebrating with the theme “Join the Voices of Recovery: Now More Than Ever!” The theme emphasizes how high levels of stress may contribute to or exacerbate alcohol or drug use, which can lead to a substance use disorder or relapse. The toolkit also raises awareness about the increasing level of stress in society and the impact it has on addiction.
 
The toolkit, available online and in hard copy, is divided into three sections: media outreach, targeted outreach, and resources. The media outreach section includes tips and template documents to help plan and promote your events. The targeted outreach section provides details about substance use disorders that are tailored for specific audiences. The resource section shares information to help you prepare for events and suggests organizations in which you could consider partnering.

Making your agency more effective at serving teens who need substance abuse treatment or mental health treatment (or both) is hard work. And even though in the past I’ve posted some of the resources here  that we have to help you, such as our free e-learning course on process improvement or our archived webinar on how to increase collections from insurance companies, you might not realize how many other things are available on the recently-redesigned NIATx web site.

• Have a question about implementing the NIATx model to improve access and retention in treatment? Head over to the NIATx Support Forum and browse the instant help FAQ for ideas and resources to address some common problems. Or, post a question to the forum and get help from over 4,000 provider participants, 100 coaches, and university staff.

Juvenile Justice Reform and Related News

• Right on the heels of a publication from the National Council of Family and Juvenile Court Judges (NCJFCJ) called, "10 Things Every Juvenile Court Judge Should Know about Trauma and Delinquency," comes a brief from the Justice Policy Institute, which also makes the case for investing in "trauma-informed care" for kids in the justice system. 
• The Sentencing Project has just launched a new page devoted to juvenile justice issues, including short summaries of recent news, research, and related resources. For example, check out the brief review of I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup, by David Chura. (Scroll down after following the link.)
• "What's the Matter with Kids Today?" The ABA Journal breaks down the emerging science on teen's developmental deficits, and how it's changing juvenile justice law. It also contains an in-depth examination of the recent Supreme Court case banning life without parole for juveniles who do not commit homicide. (Hat tip to Youth Today.)

Teens on Drugs - How We Talk About it Matters

• Hat tip to Outreach for this piece on heroin use by teens in the suburbs from Robbie Woliver, the journalist who broke the story a year ago: "These kids just don't think it's a big deal one way or another -- there is no stigma any longer, nor is it a badge of honor. It doesn't make them 'cool.' It's just what everybody does. No big deal."

This is scary stuff, no doubt, but the coverage is troubling. Woliver wants everyone to wake up because suburban teens are using heroin -- teens who are not just "the lowest-life dregs of society in skid rows and downtrodden ghettos in the worst parts of urban areas," but who "have the same family values." Which makes me wonder what Woliver would think of the teens in the justice system, where substance abuse and addiction has been a common problem for years. Maybe what's needed isn't just alarm about middle-class white kids dying from heroin, tragic though that is. Maybe we need to start caring about all our kids. 

• Want to know what works when it comes to talking to the public about teens with drug and alcohol issues who are in trouble with the law? Check out the recommendations in Solutions Storytelling: Messaging to Mobilize Support for Children's Issues. (Hat tip to sparkaction.)

Last week, I received too many links and resources to put in last week's roundup of links related to the juvenile justice system and adolescent substance abuse treatment.
So here's a bonus roundup - there's something here for everyone!
 
Mentoring At-Risk Teens

• I posted about this separately, but don't forget to check out the grants available to support mentoring for children with incarcerated parents from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB). Awards will also be made to states with high numbers of prisoners, and provisions for tribal entities in areas with high percentages of incarcerated Native Americans. Application deadline is July 30, 2010.
• Live in the Seattle area and want to work with teens in juvenile detention or in the psychiatric hospital? Pongo Teen Writing is looking for volunteers to work with them. We've featured writing from teens in the justice system and treatment from Pongo Teen Writing several times before.

Think about this: would an adult’s continuing care plan for recovery include returning to his or her favorite bar five days a week for six hours a day?  If so, what are the chances that this adult would remain abstinent? 
 
In essence, this is what is being asked of students in recovery when they return to their previous academic settings. For some students, their previous academic settings are their “bars.”

Reclaiming Futures sites have been appealing to their communities for caring adults to help teens with drug and alcohol problems who are in trouble with the law. A community event in Forsyth County, NC recently made the TV news (the Honorable William B. Reingold is pictured at left), the paper, and also netted a positive editorial from the Winston-Salem Journal.  [LATER: Reclaiming Futures Forsyth County also appeared in a second paper, the Winston-Salem Chronicle. To see it, follow the link, then click on "Archive" and choose the paper for June 17, 2010. Then navigate to page 3. The article is titled, "A Different Approach."]
And our Bristol County, MA site also made the paper a few weeks ago with a community meeting of its own on helping drug-involved youth. 
Great work, everyone!
P.S. Want to bring attention to juvenile justice reform in your community? Check out this communications toolkit for justice initiatives from the Center for Court Innovation and the Bureau of Justice Affairs.

For those of you in the adolescent substance abuse treatment field or the juvenile justice system who are trying to implement an evidence-based practice (EBP), here's a synthesis of EBP implementation research from the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN). It covers stages of implementation, research on core implementation components ... and more.
 
What's more, NIRN has also posted presentations on implementation research and online guides to different aspects of what works in implementing innovative evidence-based programming.
 
And be sure to check out these related posts:

• Implementing Evidence-Based Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment? Try The Change Book.
• Handy Reference List for Evidence-Based Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Models
  

 
(Hat tip to Paul Savery, Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Co-ordinator at the North Carolina Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services.)
 

With funding from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), NIATx and its research partner, the Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies, are developing and testing a mobile phone-based relapse prevention system that is currently being tested in a randomized controlled clinical trial.

Named Addiction CHESS (ACHESS), the system will be delivered through a smart-phone and will focus on providing information and resources to alcohol-dependent patients leaving residential care. Using the latest communications technology holds great potential to support people in recovery, particularly for young people who have come to rely on the internet and cell phones for information, entertainment, and social support.