NCJ Number
189871
Journal
SAMHSA News Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Dated: Spring 2001 Pages: 1,17-18,19
Editor(s)
Deborah Goodman
Date Published
2001
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article reported preliminary results of the 1997 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), Cannabis Youth Treatment study on the types and effectiveness of outpatient adolescent treatment.
Abstract
To address the issue of programs treating adolescent marijuana use and the effectiveness of treatment programs in reducing the use of marijuana among adolescents, the SAMHSA’s CSAT launched a 3-year Cannabis Youth Treatment Study in 1997. This study intended to answer one key question: how well outpatient treatment approaches actually worked? This article provided preliminary findings from the 3-year study. The study used a sophisticated multi-site study design to test the following treatment approaches: (1) Motivational Enhancement Therapy/Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy; (2) Cognitive Behavior Therapy 7; (3) Family Support Network; (4) Adolescent Community Reinforcement; and (5) Multidimensional Family Therapy. Coordinated by Chestnut Health Systems, the multi-site project tested the effectiveness of the five treatment approaches involving only the adolescents themselves took a 12-week intervention involving the adolescents, their families, their schools, and any other systems that touched their lives. Six-hundred adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 were randomly assigned to receive one of the five treatments. At the time of this article, the intervention phase of the project was completed and follow-up data was being gathered. Preliminary results of the marijuana youth treatment study looked promising. Taken together, the five treatment models produced dramatic changes in participants’ drug use. Overall, the rate of any use of marijuana dropped by 31 percent between 3-months before treatment and the 3-months after. By the time 6-month follow-ups were conducted, the percentage of adolescents who managed to steer clear of the criminal justice system rose from 47 percent to 60 percent. The percentage for those either in school or employed rose from 83 percent to 87 percent. Additional study results were estimated to be available in late 2001.