Vivir en Balance: Group Treatment Manual for Latinos

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Substance abuse among Latino adults is often overlooked as a national public health concern. In response to this issue and a request from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to "develop, modify, and test new or existing group therapy approaches, particularly for racial or ethnic minority populations," Danya International, Inc. proposes to develop and evaluate Vivir en Balance (VEB). VEB is an innovative, comprehensive psychoeducational program to be developed for counselors to use with Latino adults with problems related to alcohol or other substances. The proposed product will consist of a facilitator's guide and a relaxation and guided imagery CD. The facilitator's guide will include an introduction to the program and skills training, motivational enhancement techniques, and counselor and participant materials for 12 sessions. VEB will be designed for counselors and other professionals (therapists, psychologists, case managers) to use with Latino adults presenting for substance abuse services in diverse treatment settings. Latino adults in substance abuse treatment and treatment staff will be involved in the development and production of the proposed program. VEB has the following objectives: 1) To serve as a research-based, empirically tested psychoeducational curriculum that is effective and appropriate for use with Spanish-speaking adults with problems related to substance abuse, 2)To provide treatment and training materials for professionals and paraprofessionals (counselors, social workers, therapists, psychologists, case managers) that are easy to use and integrate into existing community residential and outpatient substance abuse treatment facilities VEB is the only Spanish-language manualized, comprehensive, psychoeducational curriculum tailored to Latino adult audiences. Given the growing proportion of U.S. residents who speak only Spanish, the proposed VEB curriculum will fill an expanding need among substance abuse counselors who work exclusively or more routinely with Spanish-speaking adults and will ultimately serve an important role in the efforts to close the service gap and align program offerings between English- and non-English-speaking clientele. VEB will help reduce this gap by integrating research-based approaches into a replicable, manualized, psychoeducational program that can be easily integrated into existing treatment centers and will specifically meet the needs of the Latino community.