Parent Smart: Effects of a Technology-Assisted Intervention for Parents of Adolescents in Residential Substance Use Treatment on Parental Monitoring and Communication

ABSTRACT

Promoting parent involvement in adolescent residential substance use treatment is an evidence-based principle, yet engaging parents is challenging. Parent SMART (Substance Misuse among Adolescents in Residential Treatment) is a technology-assisted intervention that was designed to engage parents of adolescents in residential SU treatment during the post-discharge transition period. A prior pilot randomized controlled trial (n = 61 parent-adolescent dyads) established Parent SMART’s feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness in reducing adolescent substance use and substance-related problems across both a short- (i.e., short-term) and long- (i.e., long-term residential) term care facility. The current secondary analysis extends this prior work by examining whether Parent SMART was associated with improvements in putative mediators of change: parental monitoring and parent-adolescent communication. Multi-modal assessment consisting of participant-report questionnaires and a behavioral interaction task evaluated parenting processes over the 24 weeks following discharge. Generalized linear mixed models showed no significant time by condition interactions on the participant-report questionnaires, but found significant interactions on all five scales of the behavioral interaction task. Supplemental analyses by long-term residential facility detected additional interaction effects favoring Parent SMART on the participant-report questionnaires. Plotting of the interaction effects indicated that Parent SMART was associated with improvements in parenting processes, whereas TAU was associated with relatively stable or worsening parenting scores. Parent SMART demonstrated preliminary effectiveness in improving key parenting processes among adolescents discharged from long-term residential substance use treatment. Parent SMART warrants further testing in a fully powered trial that evaluates parental monitoring and parent-adolescent communication as mediators of change.

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.