Staying Off Substances: A Tailored Early Recovery Program for Teens.?

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The majority of adolescents struggling to avoid substance use during early recovery are also coping with many other issues (e.g., relationships, legal, mental health) for which they require consistent support. We are proposing the development of an online relapse prevention program for adolescents called Staying Off Substances (SOS). Specific content in the program will be recommended to counselors based on their client's reported needs and strengths on the Comprehensive Health Assessment for Teens (CHAT), a web-enabled interactive adolescent self-report assessment for use in treatment settings. Counselors will be able to assign the client's user name to access privileges for that content and/or other content per their clinical judgment. We expect that CHAT: SOS will ultimately have eight modules (i.e., Physical Health, Emotional Health, Family Relationships, Peer Relationships, Romantic Relationships, School, and Legal) corresponding with the CHAT subscales. CHAT: SOS will include opportunities to reinforce the skills and philosophies that adolescents learn in treatment through online interactive exercises and journaling activities. This resource will be available to them during treatment and post-treatment. Adolescents will receive tailored recommendations and an individualized user experience because CHAT: SOS will utilize an innovative software logic application called LogicBase. In addition, CHAT: SOS will utilize motivational feedback to motivate clients to recognize and address issues in early recovery. CHAT: SOS will also provide counselors will guidelines on how to use this program with their clients (e.g., in sessions, during aftercare) and custom user reports, including adolescents' ratings of program content. This intervention will address all areas of the CHAT assessment in Phase II, but we will focus on the Peer Relationships module in the Phase I feasibility test. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Adolescent substance abuse is a significant public health issue. Unfortunately, the 2005 federal Treatment Episode Data Set indicated that less than 150,000 adolescents received treatment. Typically, 75% of those who receive treatment relapse within the following year. To address the need for cost-effective assessment, Inflexxion, Inc. developed the Comprehensive Health Assessment for Teens (CHAT), a web-enabled interactive self report assessment for use in treatment settings. We propose augmenting CHAT s scope by adding a supplemental online relapse prevention program called CHAT: Staying Off Substances (SOS). CHAT: SOS will use an adolescent's responses to the CHAT assessment to tailor web-based relapse prevention content to the adolescent's individual needs. When completed in Phase II, CHAT: SOS will use state of the art technology, including multimedia features and text messaging, to make the program interactive and accessible when other support might not be available. To assure CHAT: SOS's appeal and effectiveness, content and program features will be developed with input from focus groups and interviews with adolescents with a substance abuse diagnosis and experts in adolescent substance abuse treatment.