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Evidence-Based Treatments for Adolescent Substance Use Disorders

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Handbook of Evidence-Based Therapies for Children and Adolescents

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Abstract

Adolescent substance use continues to be a national problem in the United States. This chapter reviews treatment modalities tailored for adolescents with substance use disorders that have been studied in a controlled fashion comparing one or more modalities. Treatment modalities for substance use disorders consist of psychosocial therapies and pharmacotherapy. The psychosocial therapies may be applied to various forms of drug use. This chapter reviews therapies which target specific substance use disorders, and the few pharmacotherapy treatments that have been studied in a controlled fashion to treat substance use disorders in adolescents including psychosocial treatments of behavioral therapy; motivational enhancement therapy, combination therapies, family-based interventions, brief strategic family therapy, functional family therapy, multisystemic therapy, and multidimensional family therapy. The majority of the controlled studies represent psychotherapy treatments of various modalities, and family-based therapies have been most studied. As noted in this chapter, psychotherapies show great promise across various types of substances of abuse. Although the current literature suggests that pharmacotherapy for substance use disorders in adolescents may be promising, there is a paucity of studies. The psychosocial evidence-based treatments described in this chapter have been shown to be feasible, suitable, and efficacious in treating adolescents with substance use disorders.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Ms. Angela Walline for her support in preparation of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of California, Riverside School of Medicine, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA, USA

    Deborah Deas & Takesha Cooper

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  1. Deborah Deas
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Correspondence to Deborah Deas .

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  1. Clinical Child Psychology Program, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

    Ric G. Steele

  2. Clinical Child Psychology Program, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

    Michael C. Roberts

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Deas, D., Cooper, T. (2020). Evidence-Based Treatments for Adolescent Substance Use Disorders. In: Steele, R.G., Roberts, M.C. (eds) Handbook of Evidence-Based Therapies for Children and Adolescents. Issues in Clinical Child Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44226-2_21

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