Parents Translational Research Center
At the Treatment Research Institute

Parents as Interventionists for Moderate Drug Abusing Adolescents
Ken C. Winters, Ph.D.

This project is aimed at parents with an adolescent who is already starting to use substances.  Little attention has been paid to the large group of adolescents who use substances but are not, or not yet, dependent and who could successfully reduce substance use through early intervention.  Brief interventions (BI) that are based in cognitive-behavioral and motivational interviewing (CB-MI) strategies provide an option for such mid-level drug abusers (e.g., DSM-IV substance abuse disorder), and extant research on them suggests this approach can be effective with youth.

Since 2000, Winters and colleagues have studied with controlled designs the efficacy of BI for application to mild-to-moderate substance abusing adolescents. These studies have used the more traditional approach of counselor-led interventions.

Center research, with specific aims and hypotheses, will test a new, innovative version of a BI, one that is parent-led rather than directed by a counselor in a clinical setting.  In our view, a home-based approach has the potential to be effective because parents have an ongoing opportunity to promote key behavioral skills and changes in attitudes in their drug-using adolescent son or daughter.  And over 70% of adolescents live at home with at least one of their biological parents.  Also, the proposed study fills an important service gap. Intervention-type programs for early-stage substance abuse are not reimbursed through insurance, and thus rarely, if ever, exist as an option in the current drug treatment environment. View presentation.