There is a need for a diagnostic method and an instrument appropriate for adolescent drug abuse clients, that permits the assignment of clients to the most appropriate treatment setting, provides the basis for individualized treatment planning, and facilitates comparability across research studies. The development of the Adolescent Drug Abuse Diagnosis (ADAD), a 150-item instrument with a structured interview format, modeled after the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) (which is for adults), is described. The ADAD produces a broad-spectrum comprehensive evaluation of the client, the interviewer's ten-point severity ratings, and composite scores for each of nine life problem areas that are often relevant to the treatment needs of adolescent drug abuse clients. A series of validity and reliability tests are described. The characteristics of the standardization sample (N = 1,042), and the comparison of the characteristics of the three subsamples (outpatient, residential or non-hospital, and inpatient) are also presented.
The FACES instrument, based on Olson's Circumplex Model of family functioning, was administered to 96 adolescent drug-abuse clients and their parents. The majority of these families categorized themselves as "disengaged" (rather than "enmeshed") on the cohesion dimension, and as "rigid" (rather than "chaotic") on the adaptability dimension. These findings were unexpected as they were substantially different from published findings on families with other types of problems. Family therapists, utilizing Olson's Clinical Rating Scale for the Circumplex Model, characterized significantly more of these same families as "enmeshed," rather than "disengaged." Possible explanations for the difference between the therapists' perceptions and the families' self-perceptions are discussed.
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