The feasibility of implementing the CYT manual-guided treatment and quality assurance model in community-based adolescent treatment programs is discussed.

No abstract

are the two names I most associate with groundbreaking studies aimed at enhancing long-term recovery outcomes for adolescents following addiction treatment. They have done this through development of an approach to adolescent treatment (the Adolescent Community Reinforcement Approach) that seeks among other things to create a post-treatment family and social environment conducive to recovery and by pioneering assertive approaches to post-treatment continuing care for adolescents and their families. My own work conceptualizing a model of sustained addiction recovery management has been profoundly shaped by their respective studies and by our writing collaborations. The study below exemplifies the scientific rigor and clinical importance of their work. William

In a sample of 101 adolescents who were admitted to residential treatment for alcohol or drug dependence, the corresponding measures from the two instruments produced comparable results. If the cross-validation of these two measures generalizes to adolescents treated in out-patient settings and other adolescent treatment populations, the GAIN and Form 90 may provide useful core alcohol measures for meta-analyses.

This study evaluated the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of two types of outpatient treatment with and without Assertive Continuing Care (ACC) for 320 adolescents with substance use disorders. Study participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (a) Chestnut’s Bloomington Outpatient Treatment (CBOP) without ACC; (b) CBOP with ACC; (c) Motivational Enhancement Therapy/Cognitive Behavior Therapy-7 session model (MET/CBT7) without ACC; and (d) MET/CBT7 with ACC. All study conditions attained high rates of participant engagement and retention. Follow-up interviews were completed with over 90% of the adolescents at three, six, nine, and twelve months after treatment admission. There was a significant time by condition effect over 12 months, with CBOP having a slight advantage for average percentage of days abstinent. Unlike previous findings that ACC provided incremental effectiveness following residential treatment, there were no statistically significant findings with regard to the incremental effectiveness of ACC following outpatient treatment. Analysis of the costs of each intervention combined with its outcomes revealed that the most cost-effective condition was MET/CBT7 without ACC.