An Independent Effectiveness Trial of Multisystemic Therapy With Juvenile Justice Youth

Abstract

This study examines the effectiveness of an evidence-based practice, multisystemic therapy (MST), conducted in a real-world mental health setting with juvenile justice involved youth and their families. Importantly, this is the first randomized clinical trial of MST with juvenile offenders in the United States conducted without direct oversight by the model developers. This study reports outcomes achieved for 93 youth randomly assigned to MST or treatment as usual (TAU) services through 18-month follow-up posttreatment for offense data and 6-month follow-up posttreatment for ratings of the Child and Adolescent Functional Assessment Scale (CAFAS). Outcomes include significant reduction in rearrest and improvement in 4 areas of functioning measured by the CAFAS for youth who received MST. Implications for delivery of empirically supported treatments in real-world settings are discussed.

Race, Substance Abuse, and Mental Health Disorders as Predictors of Juvenile Court Outcomes: Do They Vary By Gender?

“…This was substantially lower than the prevalence estimates found in other studies conducted with samples of juvenile-justice-involved youth (Teplin et al 2002;Timmons-Mitchell et al 1997). This may be a reflection of different measures used by researchers to examine prevalence estimates in samples of juvenile-justice-involved youth (Timmons-Mitchell et al 2006). Furthermore, similar to the findings of Teplin et al (2006), our findings revealed that a lower proportion of African-American females met criteria for a substance use disorder and a mental health disorder than non-African-American females.…”

The State of the Evidence Base for Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents

“…This question points to the need for further research in relation to those treatments that appear to be effective in some contexts but not in others. Multisystemic Therapy, for example, can boast of successful trials in the United States and Norway, but failed replication in Sweden and Canada [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] .…”

Participação de famílias no Grupo Multifamiliar de adolescentes ofensores sexuais: vergonha e confiança

“…Estas frases são exemplos do saldo positivo que as famílias apontam para a participação no GM. O grupo funciona como apoio, a conversa é boa e a fala dos profissionais tem um valor definido, afinal são especialistas falando para as famílias, conforme pontuam Henggeler et al (1992) e Timmons-Mitchell et al (2006). "Alegria de aprender junto com outras pessoas".…”

“…Nossa opção teórica e metodológica é o GM, mas as considerações sobre a TM são relevantes, pois se trata de outra modalidade de intervenção para adolescentes ofensores sexuais, que está sendo amplamente adotada nos Estados Unidos e Canadá (Borduin, Scheffer, & Heiblum, 2009;Henggeler et al, 1992;Henggeler et al, 2009;Timmons-Mitchell et al, 2006) e que parte do princípio da família e da comunidade como mediadores e potencializadores de mudanças positivas para os atos infratores do adolescente. Sendo assim, possui muitos elementos em comum com a GM.…”