Interpersonal Associations and Completing a Substance Use Day Treatment Program

ABSTRACT

Purpose

Social influence can be important to people’s substance use recovery. It functions in professional substance use treatment programs and in the 12-step approach to recovery.

Method

The study reported here employed clinical data mining methodology to study the role of interpersonal associations inside and outside of substance use treatment in predicting clients’ treatment success.

Results

In this study, the interpersonal associations available in treatment predicted greater odds of completing a day treatment program. Two interpersonal associations outside of treatment had an effect on successful program completion, but only one was in the hypothesized direction.

Discussion

Social learning theory and 12-Step philosophy offer a lens for viewing the role interpersonal associations might play in a client’s recovery process.

KEYWORDS:

• Interpersonal
• substance use treatment
• social learning
• 12-step philosophy
• clinical data mining

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Brigham Young University, Office of Research & Creative Activities, Mentoring Environment Grants.