Abstract
Recovery high schools are one form of continuing care support for adolescents with substance use or other co-occurring disorders. Using a controlled quasi-experimental design, we compared mental health symptom outcomes at 6 months for adolescents who attended recovery high schools vs. non-recovery high schools (e.g., traditional or alternative schools). The propensity score balanced sample included 194 adolescents (134 in recovery schools, 60 in non-recovery schools) enrolled in schools in MN, WI, or TX (average age = 16; 86% White; 51% female). Baseline data indicated that this is a dually diagnosed population—94% of students met criteria for at least one mental health diagnosis and 90% had received mental health treatment distinct from treatment for substance use disorders. Results from multilevel logistic regression models indicated that at the 6-month follow-up, adolescents attending both recovery and non-recovery high schools reported substantial improvements in mental health symptoms. However, there were no significant differences in mental health outcomes between the two groups. We conclude that although recovery high schools offer promise for reducing substance use and improving academic success, and while adolescents’ mental health symptoms improved between baseline and follow-up, recovery high schools may have minimal differential effects on adolescents’ mental health symptoms.
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Funding
This work was supported by Award Number R01DA029785 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Drug Abuse or the National Institutes of Health.
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ETS and EAH declare that they have no conflicts of interest. AJF declares that he is a non-voting unpaid board member for the Association of Recovery Schools, but he will receive no financial benefit from the findings published in this article. DPM declares that he is a board member for a private nonprofit recovery high school, with no financial interests or remuneration.
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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Minnesota Institutional Review Board and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000.
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Parental informed consent and individual assent was obtained from all participants included in the study.
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Tanner-Smith, E.E., Finch, A.J., Hennessy, E.A. et al. Effects of Recovery High School Attendance on Students’ Mental Health Symptoms. Int J Ment Health Addiction 17, 181–190 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-017-9863-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-017-9863-7