Recovery and Youth: An Integrative Review

Abstract

Although rates of alcohol and other substance use disorders in adolescents have been estimated for decades, little is known about the prevalence, pathways, and predictors of remission and long-term recovery among adolescents. This article provides an integrative review of the literature on youth recovery. A final selection of 39 relevant articles was grouped into five sections: treatment outcomes, special emphasis populations, recovery-oriented systems of care, families, and non–abstinence-based approaches. The review recommends more adolescent research in three basic areas: more research about medication-assisted treatment and recovery as well as harm reduction approaches for adolescents; expansion of research on recovery practices for youth who do not receive treatment due to personal choice or societal disparities; and more life course research, which may begin with adolescent participants and extend across the life span. Additionally, the authors suggest the recovery capital model for adolescents and the neuroscience of addiction may provide additional precision and direction for the study of youth recovery.

From the Editors

“…10 This section includes articles on long-term clinical in-person care (McKay, 2021), 13 pharmacology (Mason and Heyser, 2021), 14 and the growing array of community-based recovery support services, such as mutual help organizations (Zemore, Gilbert, Pinedo, et al, 2021), 15 as well as recovery housing, recovery coaching, recovery supports in education, and recovery community centers (Jason, Salomon-Amend, Guerrero, et al, 2021). 16 Demographic and clinical factors that have been shown to affect initiation and trajectories of recovery and related change are featured in depth with specific focus on sex (Holzhauer, Cucciare, and Epstein, 2020), 17 age (Finch, Jurinsky, and Anderson, 2020), 18 and race and ethnicity (Wagner and Baldwin, 2020). 19 In sum, during the past 50 years since the birth of NIAAA, and strongly influenced by the voluminous research it has generated, the field has witnessed a number of evolutionary paradigm shifts in understanding and approach that have informed how best to address the endemic problems associated with alcohol misuse and AUD.…”