Long-term trajectories of adolescent recovery

Abstract: 

A growing literature has emerged examining long-term patterns of substance use among teens who exhibit casual and more severe use. This work evaluates treatment outcomes for teens who have substance abuse problems and identifies important developmental correlates of those outcomes as teens age into young adulthood. This research informs the development of valuable addiction recovery management models and identifies some factors that are particularly important to be considered in teens as compared to adults. This chapter reviews the literature on trajectories of substance abuse among teens who use alcohol and drugs. We first consider patterns of substance involvement among those teens who have had an episode of alcohol or drug treatment. We then consider three domains of empirically identified factors associated with substance use after treatment, including (1) biological factors (psychiatric comorbidity, neurocognitive factors), (2) personal characteristics (e.g., demographic factors, motivation, cognition, personality traits, self-help group attendance), and (3) social/environmental factors (e.g., living environment, peer associations, parental factors). We then examine substance use trajectories of those teens who have not entered treatment. We examine the primary substance use patterns identified in the literature and the factors associated with a “natural recovery” or with a more persistent pattern of use as these youth age into adulthood. We conclude by summarizing the key differences between teens who enter treatment and those who do not, highlighting how teen recovery patterns differ from adult recovery patterns, and discuss the importance of adolescent recovery patterns to an addiction recovery model.