Individual vs. Group Community Reinforcement Training to Help Parents of Substance-using Treatment-refusing Youth (POP)

Group Community Reinforcement Training for Parents of Treatment-Elusive Youth

The purpose of this study is to test the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of Community Reinforcement Training (CRT) provided in a group therapy format. The goals of CRT are to teach parents behavioral and communication skills to influence their youth's drug use and encourage them to enter treatment. Thirty parents will be randomly assigned to Group CRT and 30 will be randomly assigned to traditional, Individual CRT. Youth engaged in treatment will receive individual Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Families are assessed for adolescent substance use and other areas of individual and family functioning. It is expected that Group CRT will be more effective for encouraging youth entry into treatment and improving parental functioning.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Substance Use Disorders; Treatment Refusal
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Group Community Reinforcement Training for Parents; Behavioral: Individual Community Reinforcement Training for Parents

Detailed Description

Very few youth with drug abuse or dependence in the United States receive treatment. This population of untreated youth represents a massive "treatment gap" in adolescent health care that renders impotent a potentially important avenue for preventing chronic drug abuse and related difficulties. The lack of motivation for treatment characterizing most adolescent drug abusers significantly decreases the likelihood these youth will enter treatment, barring mandates from the legal system or other social institutions. Efficacy studies have demonstrated that Community Reinforcement Training (CRT), an approach that involves teaching parents how to engage their youth into treatment, can work to recruit 60-80% of these treatment-elusive youth. CRT is traditionally provided in an individual therapy format to one or both parents. This study will improve upon our prior work by using a group format to provide a less costly procedure for engaging youth into treatment and to make it more portable to treatment agencies, schools, juvenile justice, and other community organizations seeking to offer support to parents or engage youth in treatment, thus significantly increasing the adoption and sustainability of the approach.

This study will examine the efficacy of the group format (G-CRT) for helping parents engage their unmotivated, resistant youth in treatment compared to the traditional individual format (I-CRT). Parents (n = 60) will be randomly assigned to G-CRT or to I-CRT. We will evaluate the differential efficacy of G-CRT, relative to I-CRT, on rates of adolescent engagement in treatment. We expect that G-CRT, compared to I-CRT, will also be associated with greater parent encouragement of adolescent sobriety, perceived social support, and family functioning. We also predict that changes on these process variables will predict increased success in engaging adolescents. We will also examine treatment outcomes for youth engaged in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as a function of parental involvement in G-CRT or I-CRT. We predict enhanced support received by parents in G-CRT will result in greater reductions in drug use and lower levels of HIV-risk behaviors, outcomes hypothesized to be mediated by motivation to change and sessions attendance. Finally, we will conduct an informal cost-effectiveness analysis to derive preliminary estimates of the relative costs of each treatment modality per outcome unit and hypothesize that G-CRT will be more cost effective than I-CRT by virtue of having higher clinical effectiveness and lower costs. Successful outcomes here will provide the basis for a full clinical trial with larger samples.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 60
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Oregon
    • Portland, Oregon, United States, 97232
      • Center for Family and Adolescent Research

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child; Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Parents have an adolescent between 15-20 years
• Parents have had contact with the adolescent on at least 40% of the past 12 weeks
• Parents have some knowledge or evidence that the adolescent would meet DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for a substance use disorder
• Adolescent has explicitly refused to attend any intake or therapy sessions
• Adolescent is not under a current court mandate for treatment or has refused to comply with the mandate
• English-speaking capability (parents and adolescents)

Exclusion Criteria:

• Evidence of adolescent psychotic or organic state of sufficient severity to interfere with understanding of study instruments and procedures
• Adolescent had received drug treatment (except detoxification) in the past 12 weeks.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: G-CRT; Group Community Reinforcement Training for parents	Behavioral: Group Community Reinforcement Training for Parents; Other Names: G-CRT
Active Comparator: I-CRT; Individual Community Reinforcement Training for parents	Behavioral: Individual Community Reinforcement Training for Parents; Other Names: I-CRT

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Adolescent treatment engagement	An adolescent may enter the CBT treatment program ("treatment engagement") at any point during the 4-month time period after his or her parents begin I-CRT or G-CRT therapy.	4 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Timeline Followback (TLFB) interview	The TLFB is an interview to assess the quantity, frequency, and pattern of illicit substance use. Parents provide collateral data on their adolescents' substance use in the 3 months prior to enrollment. Adolescents report on their own substance use for the 3 months prior to their parents' enrollment through 6 months after enrollment.	9 months

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Medical Outcome Studies Social Support Survey	The MOS consists of four support subscales (Emotional/Informational, Tangible, Affectionate, and Positive Social) and an overall functional social support index. This measure will be completed by parents at baseline (about the 3 months prior to enrollment) and at 3- and 6-month follow-up points. It will be used to compare perceived social support for parents in the G-CRT versus I-CRT interventions.	9 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Oregon Research Institute
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Erica M Finstad, Ph.D., Oregon Research Institute

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: April 1, 2013
• Primary Completion (Actual): November 1, 2015
• Study Completion (Actual): March 1, 2016

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: April 9, 2013
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 9, 2013
• First Posted (Estimate): April 11, 2013

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimate): September 30, 2016
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: September 29, 2016
• Last Verified: September 1, 2016

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Adolescents; Teens; Parents; Parenting; Substance Abuse; Treatment Efficacy
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Mental Disorders; Chemically-Induced Disorders; Substance-Related Disorders
• Other Study ID Numbers: 1R34DA034301 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)