A Naturalistic Evaluation of a Group Intervention for Parents of Youth with Substance Use Disorders

ABSTRACT

Parents of youth with substance use disorders (SUDs) often play a vital role in successful treatment, yet little is known about interventions designed to help them cope with the stress of this role, especially as delivered in real-world settings. Evaluations of such interventions could potentially inform adaptations to enhance their clinical utility. Parents of youth with SUDs attending a clinician-led group based on the CRAFT model completed measures at intake, 4- and 8-weeks. Parents (n = 545) attended an average of 3.7 sessions; 12% completed all 8 weeks. Analysis of demographic predictors of retention indicated that older parents attended more sessions on average. Overall stress did not change across time points (p > .05). However, parents reported improvement in parent empowerment as measured by the Parent Empowerment Scale, a novel measure of parent empowerment in coping with their child’s SUD (p < .001). Clinician led evidence-informed group services may improve parents’ perceived ability to help their child with their SUD. Low retention rates highlight the need to better understand the factors contributing to retention, and the potential value of adaptations to shorten the intervention. Programs serving youth with SUDs may wish to consider integrating such group services to support parents.

KEYWORDS:

• Substance use disorders
• youth
• parent support
• community reinforcement and family training
• measurement based practice

Disclosure statement

The authors have no financial or professional conflicts of interest to report with respect to the content of the current article. Dr. Amy Yule has served as a consultant to Phoenix House from 2015 to 2017 and is currently a consultant to the Gavin House (clinical service).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the Office of Academic Affiliations, Department of Veterans Affairs through a fellowship to Dr. Ameral; the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Physician Scientist Program in Substance Abuse under National Institute on Drug Abuse grant 5K12DA000357-17 to Dr Yule; and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism under grants K23AA025707 to Dr. Bergman and K24AA022136 to Dr. Kelly.