Adolescents in Treatment Example Paper

The prevalence of substance addiction among adolescents is ever increasing. There are many social and psychological factors that contribute to this problem, but the question that interests the families with inflicted adolescents most is how to overcome the addiction and return to a normal life. Winters, Botzet and Fahnhorst have provided a detailed overview of modern non-confrontational approaches to substance abuse treatment in adolescents in their 2011 article “Advances in Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment”, which can be accessed at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166985/. Adolescents in Treatment Example Paper

The article compares different approaches to substance abuse treatment, evaluating their efficacy and providing directions for future research. Nowadays, there is a wide variety of orientations and techniques that counselors and clinicians can use with this population within five levels of care in Addiction Medicine. The authors observe that, whatever therapeutic model is used, the prevalent approaches today are cognitive-behavioral treatment, brief intervention/ motivational interviewing and contingency management reinforcement. Referring to comparative studies, they claim that cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational enhancement and family therapy have demonstrated the best outcomes in substance abuse among treatment adolescents. The authors argue that treatment efficiency of these approaches could be enhanced with the incorporation of adolescent-specific elements, such as family involvement, aftercare support, cultural and gender differences, comprehensive assessment with the consideration for mental health and education issues. They also emphasize the need to minimize the risk of relapse by manipulating both individual and treatment variables. The article argues that, despite large advances in substance abuse treatment, more research is necessary on the specific factors that influence its efficacy with adolescents. Adolescents in Treatment Example Paper